


Perfect Union

by arcjet



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hate Sex, When you just wanna kill each other but your respective lieutenants say no, unstoppable force/immovable object
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 09:01:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 29,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16446821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcjet/pseuds/arcjet
Summary: The alliance between the Commonwealth Minutemen and the Brotherhood of Steel was supposed to make saving the world easier.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to a be a one-shot that got way out of hand.

Meeting was inevitable; their respective fortresses had been eyeing each other across the harbor for weeks. A stronghold of stone and dirt defiantly staring up to the marvel of hydrogen and steel. He watched from his observation deck as artillery was erected on each pointed corner, watching as their radio tower attracted hordes of shabby wastelanders in, pouring uniformed officers out. As she paced along the castle’s walls, she could see vertibirds depart from the airship, heavy thuds of power-armored soldiers echoing throughout the Commonwealth.

From their respective high towers, they couldn’t quite gauge each other. She nearly called an artillery strike once when Brotherhood soldiers descended upon a Railroad safehouse she had sent some men to protect, but more often than not, their teams fought side by side, clearing hospitals and alleyways without a single exchange.

And when a navy blue envelope landed on his desk, his first instinct was to throw it away, but he knew as he looked over the airport, at their dwindling supplies and pathetic resources, that she was probably his best bet at winning this war. So he climbed onto a vertibird with Kells and Danse and found himself within the cool stone walls he had observed for the past months, staring straight at the woman who had everything, but revealed nothing.

—

Negotiations were an excruciating two weeks, often devolving into bickering and quick reaches into inner-pocket holdout weapons between the two leaders before break was called by Kells or Garvey, who would usher their respective superiors out of the humid meeting room, lighting cigarettes and/or cigars for them as they hissed epithets about each other.

“I refuse to negotiate with bigots,” Nora would huff, as Preston murmured to her about the Brotherhood’s vast arsenal of weapons and technology. “They can take their mini-nukes and shove it up their—I don’t care, Preston! If the Minutemen want to save the Commonwealth, we need to leave these tin cans in the goddamn past where they belong.”

Meanwhile, Maxson outside the thick double doors would have whitened fists and fingernails digging deep into his palms. “This is an exercise in fucking futility,” he would snarl. Danse would quietly remind him of the Minutemen’s huge connected supply lines, all with fresh running water and locked warehouses full of food and medicine.

He had truly never met someone so ideologically different from himself. Matters from non-humans to feeding his troops led to instantaneous clashing, it was a wonder how they even shared a common enemy. But it was their secondaries quietly but urgently reminding them of the shadowy threat lurking beneath their feet that, after the appropriate amount of nicotine and deep breaths, made them both return to the meeting room, sitting across from each other at the long, rectangular table, smoothing down the fronts of their coats. A few initial civil words exchanged, before the process would began all over again, both parties trying desperately to save their men and face at the same time.

The General spoke excessively, with tenacity and vigor, her cheeks flushing furiously as she demanded to know just what the Brotherhood feared about synths and ghouls. The Elder preferred short, terse responses, passion and anger dripping from his voice he spat back his reasons; she almost winced at each word. In the beginning, Kells and Garvey had jumped up at the first sign of discontent between the two leaders, but towards the end, they barely flinched, having already ensured that every last potential weapon had been removed from the room.

By some miracle, a fortnight later, they were signing the last page of a thick packet of paper, each sheet dense with the nervous scrawls of a Brotherhood scribe, words dictated by the General, who had once been something called a lawyer. Like a mercenary but with words, the scribe had told him when he’d asked quietly, and he could see this in her darkened eyes as she delicately flicked a quill pen across the dotted line.

When they left the meeting room, a stiff shaking of the hands later, they both truly believed they would never see each other again, that that was the end of it. They had just spent two weeks setting the precedent; their soldiers could carry out the plans they had formed, and they could go back to seething at each other from across the peninsula. That probably would have been the best for them. Best for the Commonwealth, too.

—

Instead, a week later, while he was giving an address to his soldiers on the Prydwen, an out-of-breath initiate could barely pant out _thegeneraloftheminutemenishere_ before she stormed through the command deck, anger tangible enough that even power armor-clad knights wielding miniguns parted for her, stuck her flushed face inches from his and furiously snarled, “We had an agreement.”

“General,” he acknowledged coolly.

She hissed, “Brotherhood soldiers intercepted a synth transport team in Malden today. Honor our _fucking_ agreement, or _fucking_ starve.”

She turned on her heels and marched off, dark hair and coattails nearly whipping him in the face. He muttered a lukewarm dismissal to his soldiers before he caught up to her just before she returned to the flight deck, his entire hand wrapping around her wiry arm as he dragged her back through the Prydwen into his office, ignoring her venomous threats and protests, and unceremoniously flinging her against the door as he circled behind his desk. When he had turned back to face her, he was looking down the blade of a combat knife.

Dismissively, he remarked, “Schedule a meeting next time, instead of disrupting me in front of my men.”

“I’ll consider it when you start adhering to your end of the deal,” she spat, flinging the knife towards him, and it sunk deep into the edge of his desk, just a few inches from where he stood. She grinned at its quivering handle satisfactorily.

Maxson wrenched the knife out of the wood, letting it clatter onto the table, steadying himself by putting his palms on the table. He was trying his best to stay calm, overly conscious that they were within the thin steel confines of the Prydwen, nothing like the soundproof stone walls of the Castle. He was desperately clinging on to the last remnants of his self-control, if not for his soldiers’ sakes then his own, though his own anger began bubbling within his chest, threatening to spill over. Unlike the feverish woman in front of him, he took great care in cultivating his image as a leader.

“We offered you air support and munitions for facing the Institute, nothing more.”

Meanwhile, the General was indifferent to how she was perceived; she knew her results spoke for themselves, and her pre-war education gave her the verbal arsenal to express just how pissed off she was at any given time. “We also agreed to stay out of each other’s business.”

“And would you describe this as _staying out of each other’s business_?”

“Would you describe your walking cisterns opening fire on my patrol as _staying out_ —” she began mockingly, but was quickly cut off.

In one swift motion, he had grabbed the front of her coat and careened them both to the side so the desk no longer stood between them. “Remember whose ship you’re on now,” he muttered into her ear, feeling the heat rise in her skin near where his fist clenched the fabric of her clothes. “And show a little _fucking_ respect.”

She whispered back, completely unfazed, “You can get it when you earn it.” Before yanking herself out of his grasp and storming out of the room, leaving the faint scent of cigarette smoke and flowers in her wake.

And that _really_ should have been the end of it.

But it wasn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maxson gets even.

Things did settle for a while, though - caravans began stopping by the airport, refreshing the Prydwen’s soldiers with fresh vegetables and clean water,  and a small team of dirty wastelanders arrived at the airport with building materials for an on-site greenhouse. It had been about four hours of back-and-forth to establish that arrangement alone, and that was after the General had nearly laughed Maxson out of the room when he requested a _donation_ of thirty percent of the crops her farms produced.

Correspondence between the two bases resumed with written reports between each respective second-in-command, an addend to the original agreement. Upon learning that Nora had thrown a knife at the Elder of the fucking Brotherhood of Steel, Preston sent an extremely long apology letter to the airship, received promptly by Captain Kells, and the two deputies decided it would be best to keep all forms of communications between the leaders extremely separate, and to redirect vertibird requests through Preston, to prevent future _incidents_.

Nora probably wouldn’t have let Preston do that, but fortunately for their alliance, she had business to tend to in Goodneighbor, and wasn’t there to stop him.

Maxson received reports nearly daily, going through them almost like a bedtime story, a cigar in one hand and glass of whiskey in the other, and soon came to realize he preferred the General over paper. Her feats were impressive, considering she had been a pre-War housewife for most of her conscious years, and she got results quickly and quietly. It was understandable how she had rallied an entire network of wastelanders to support her, and the numbers seemed to grow every day.

Her last report detailed her trip to the Memory Den; an ex-Institute scientist was hiding out in the Glowing Sea, and she had requested a suit of power armour for the trip. Also, the greenhouse has been completed, she wrote, and the crew should arrive early tomorrow morning to begin set up.

He put the request in with Ingram before going to bed. Maybe this woman wouldn’t be the end of him, after all, he mused.

Until he rose the next morning, peered down at the new greenhouse from his observation deck, and nearly caused a scribe to spill coffee over herself as he barked at her to get him a vertibird.

—

She had barely shucked her coat and plopped down into her chair when the doors to her office smashed open, revealing the leather bulk of a livid Elder.

“Is this your idea of a joke?” He snarled.

She greeted him warmly.

“The ghouls,” he continued, barely giving notice to a chair flying sideways as he charged right up to her desk, leaning obtrusively forward, disregarding whatever the agreed diplomatic berth was given to be. Anger radiated off him in waves, almost visible where the air touched his skin. “We’re supposed to be feeding my men, not creating security threats.”

Gently, Nora put her pen back into its holder before slowly rising to match his pose, her eyes narrowing. “Is there a problem with the people I sent?”

Maxson stated it as a fact. “They’re not people.”

The two leaders stared each other down, neither wanting to break their gaze or silence first. After a few tense seconds, it was only out of impatience, rather than respect, that Maxson straightened up abruptly and cleared his throat.

“The airport has enough of a ghoul problem -”

“ _Feral_ problem,” she interrupted.

“All ghouls—”

“—were like you and me, once.” Nora concluded, beaming satisfactorily. They had already hashed this out - several times, with much louder voices - during negotiations. She broke herself away from Maxson’s glare and walked off to the side, pouring herself a cup of coffee and bringing it to her lips expectantly. “Great talk. Anything else?”

It seemed to take all the effort Maxson could muster to keep his voice even when he spoke, “It was outlined in our alliance that the Brotherhood can and will exercise our right to ban any perceived threat from our base, and the Minutemen have agreed to honor that.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And the Brotherhood perceives my hardworking citizens as threats?”

“The Brotherhood perceives threats as threats.”

“You should consider yourself lucky. The Slog team are extremely diligent. Plus, they’ll work during radstorms.” She winked.

He flinched visibly, feeling his resolve to remain professional disappear as she smirked at him from across the room. Another silence fell as they looked at each other, eyes flicking over each other’s every detail: trying to find one flaw, one button to push, to send the other over the edge and fucking shoot them so the whole ordeal could be over already. But they had already discovered all they were willing to reveal to each other over the course of two weeks in the stuffy conference room next door. Two professional chess players, mentally thirty moves ahead from the game splayed in front of them, and nowhere else to go.

“That’s besides the point, General.”

She rolled her eyes. “And what is the point? Or did you just come here to whine?”

“Are you being dense on purpose?” Maxson demanded.“They are liabilities. Besides the obvious threat of becoming feral, how can you trust ghouls to provide anything suitable for human consumption?”

Her derisive laugh pierced his eardrums. “You’re absolutely delusional, Maxson.”

The only warning she got was the blue in his eyes nearly turning black before he had closed the distance between them, wrenching the coffee mug out of her hands and pitching it against the wall, where it shattered to the floor. In the same movement, he had backed her against the wall completely, his forearm pressed hard against her chest.

“The Brotherhood may be in your debt currently,” he whispered, voice dangerously low in her ear, “But burning these bridges before we face the Institute would be unwise.”

“Is that a threat, Elder?”

His head snapped up at the rare use of his title, and she quickly took the opportunity to yank herself out of his hold, snatching a letter opener glinting on her desk. By the time Maxson had turned around, jaw clenched tight, she was already charging straight at him, but he deftly caught her wrist, stopping the silver point just centimeters away from his chest. Shaking his head in disbelief, he drove her stumbling backwards with her arm, sending her crashing against some file cabinets.

He had strength and size over her, but the General was scrappier than she looked and extremely quick, taking another swipe at him with the letter opener before he could even straighten up. It landed this time, a shallow laceration just beneath his eye, barely enough to bleed, but the proximity alone made his heart race, and whatever was left of his self-control dissolved, replaced with pure adrenaline.

She went in for another strike, and he was prepared, grabbing her wrist again but this time spinning her around, arm painfully pinned to her back, his other hand pushing her upper back. Without pretense, he slammed her face-forward against the door, ignoring the stream of curses falling out of her mouth, and squeezed the sides of her wrist. Her fingers fell open involuntarily, and the letter opener that had been gripped tight in her fist clattered to the ground gracelessly.

“Trust me, General,” he spat, watching as beads of sweat dotted her forehead. “You will know when I threaten you.”

When she turned her profile to Maxson, his breath hot against her neck, and saw his anger matched hers, it almost made her smile.

“Well, you’re not going to get what you want otherwise,” she finally said, sliding her free hand towards the metal door handle, gripping it tight. “But this was a lovely meeting as usual—”

The door had barely opened an inch when he slammed it closed again, the sharp thud echoing throughout the room, and as quickly as he had spun her around and splayed a hand at the base of her neck, threatening to close, the General had yanked him downwards by the lapels of his coat so they matched eye levels.

He hissed some semblance of her title and she flicked her eyes up at him. There was nothing in her face but rage as she pulled him indomitably close and whispered through clenched teeth, “Do it. I fucking dare you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote this a bunch of times! I originally posted this to get my feelings about Maxson being hot but lame out of my system but now that there are actual readers and feedback, I am suitably nervous. So thanks. <3 T_T


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maxson and Nora learn about problem resolution.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lil Maxson character study. And smut.

Maxson lost control more often than his soldiers hopefully thought.

Nerve damage and generational posturing and a varied Citadel diet of high-calorie MREs lent him an impassive, towering stance that a more average man might hope to attain by entering a suit of power armour. The image cultivated itself well. They said he was a master tactician, an undefeated combatant, and a skilled diplomat, that he brought honor and strength back to the Maxson name—all things he...half-believed.

Internally, he was much less composed. His voice was still cracking when he made Elder, and it sometimes still did, just a single tremor on his vocal chord, perhaps after receiving a particularly gruesome casualty report, when expectant eyes turn towards him and all he can do is bark out orders for holotags and incineration. He considered the constant tug of emotion at his chest his greatest weakness, and when it crept up his throat and revealed itself to the world, the greatest embarrassment.

It always went unnoticed, of course. If heard, would probably be dismissed as an understandable reaction to the horrors of war. But to Maxson, nothing highlighted his age and inexperience more.

So when the General had yanked him downwards and he could feel her ragged breath against his jaw, he was mostly wondering if she had heard the crack in his voice when he muttered her title. He didn’t fear much anymore, but he couldn’t have his diplomatic equal thinking of him as—

“Do it,” she growled, jerking him even closer, the tips of their respective noses almost touching. “I fucking dare you.”

—a stupid, impulsive kid.

And as quickly as he closed his mouth aggressively on hers, feeling her flail slightly before pressing up into him he found himself wrenching away from her, a gloved hand flying to the sharp pain blistering across his lip.

“You bit me,” he said hoarsely. For all his rage and fury, it was bewilderment that caused color to rush up his face, peeking through his beard. A swipe of the inside of his lip revealed a diluted wash of blood on his fingertips. “You fucking bit me.”

“You fucking— _kissed_ me,” Nora spluttered in reply, a deep red flush spreading across her cheeks and down her neck. One hand was still clutching the front of his coat, and she used it to push the shocked Elder backwards until he hit her desk, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “What the _fuck_ —”

She didn’t quite finish her thought before she pulled him downwards again, tasting blood on his teeth, tongue darting between the roof of his mouth and the swollen bottom lip where she had broken skin. When the iron hit her tongue, she let out a small moan.

Maxson tensed in his jacket at the sound, sucking in ragged breaths from the sides of his mouth, the leather stretching as his muscles flexed around her with uncertainty, almost clumsily, trying to stake a claim somewhere, anywhere.

Eventually, he found a grip on her elbow and swapped their positions, trapping her against the desk before forcibly yanking her wrist down from his coat and pinning it behind her, and she pulled him down and far, far past the point of no return. With a strained grunt, a hot exhale of breath into his mouth that flared Maxson’s anger as much as his dick, she snapped him forward until he let his weight drop to the table over her. The resounding thud of his palm hitting the wood flicked both their eyes open, and they broke apart, sweating and seething.

He took a long look at the panting General beneath him, trying to both make sense of the situation and catch his breath before he spoke. “You said—”

She cut him off almost immediately with another frustrated groan. “Why would I—I meant fucking _kill_ me.”

Fruitlessly, she tried to pull him back down, but he held back, looking down at her incredulously. “I’m not going to do that.”

Another pull, another groan when he remained sturdy against her draw. She let go of his coat, opting instead to hook a leg around his hips, before wriggling her trapped wrist out of his grasp and clasping her hands around the back of his head, bringing him crashing down on top of her. With their bodies perfectly flush, Nora swung her other leg around him, hitching him close and her lips were almost touching his ear as she whispered, “Righteous fuck.”

Verbal coherence had been lost on Maxson some time between being buried in the crook of her neck and feeling her arch herself up into his hips, where finding his irritatingly present erection elicited a satisfied chuckle from the General as she ground against him, only further stoking the burning rage within his chest. He had thought about the General like this, perhaps in strange, fleeting dreams or as he cycled through various mental images in his shower—her propensity for invading his personal space with her pre-War perfume and constantly flushed cheeks had lent itself to that—but he had been taken by surprise and the mismatch between her control over him right now and in his mind took priority in his clouded brain.

He was supposed to be laughing at _her_ powerlessness.

So he scooped her up from the desk entirely and slammed her against the nearest wall, snatching up both her wrists with one hand and pinning them above her. She swore loudly, and again when he snatched her jaw with his other hand, the heat of his palm fighting with the heat of her furiously flushed cheeks. When the cognitive dissonance evaporated, words found him again, and his voice was a low growl.

“You’re welcome to break our alliance first, and we will retaliate accordingly.”

She hissed through the tight clamp he held on her face, “Don’t tempt me,” before nails dug into his hand, forcing a release, and they began their brawl again.  

But different this time. Equally violent, equally angry, though they never once broke apart completely. Between grunts and elbows and blister-inducing kisses, she roughly shoved his coat off his shoulders where it fell with a thud to the floor. In response, and with newfound mobility, he snaked one arm around her waist to hoist her back up to his hips, while another tugged at her belt.

There was a restless energy between them; two weeks’ worth of built up tension, unable to be resolved in more traditional wasteland ways. An unsaid disclaimer which came with re-pioneering civilization.

Nora was sharp and quick in all situations, it turned out. After tugging a wrist out of his grasp, she left a trail of teeth marks like flea bites and scratches down his neck and chest and stomach, before her impatient hands couldn’t figure out the rest of the clasps and buckles. Each hiss she extracted from between his clenched teeth seemed to egg her on as she darted quickly to another patch of scarred skin to maul.

Maxson, on the other hand, remained stalwart and unyielding; his vice grip on her waist would surely bruise and the pressure of his lips and tongue would draw blood beneath the surface of the smooth skin of the General’s neck.

They were different methods. But they held the same intentions.

They undressed each other the bare minimum—flight suit unzipped to the upper thighs, blouse unbuttoned but not shucked. This would be a utilitarian act, denoted by the silence save for short breaths and muted curses. He dropped her momentarily to work on the final clasp on his uniform, until the only thing left between him and the stale air of her office were his briefs.

When her pants had been peeled down the length of her legs, he released her pinned wrist to dig broad fingertips into the soft flesh of her thigh, hitching her back up to him and redistributing her weight between his arms and the wall. She angrily yelped when he jammed two fingers into her mouth before dipping them between her spread thighs, her curses so faint they could have been sighs.

She relaxed around his hand, rocking herself against his curled fingers as best she could. He could feel her wetness seep into his fingertips as he breathed raggedly into her neck, in time with the pulse of his dick. When he finally drew back, looking down at the General’s semi-exposed chest and half-lidded, hazy eyes, and realized he had been wrong before.

 _This_ was the point of no return.

So he offered her one last cursory glance, but she just roughly yanked his underwear down in reply, completely exposing him. They made eye contact one last time, though they didn’t see each other as much as they just saw red, before he dropped her down and took her to the hilt with a muffled groan. Immediately, her legs flew up around his hips, locking him in deep, and he ground against her cervix as she clung to him tightly.

Gradually, the breathy moans in his ear became well-formed curses, her core beginning to tremble. Then, all around him, she tensed—pulling his hair blindingly tight into her palm, teeth sinking down through the leather of his uniform—and he held pressed her still and tight against the wall, trying to stifle his groans as her walls pulsed angrily around him.

When they subsided, and her legs were only loosely clinging around his hips, he pulled back from her, tip rubbing against her outer folds, before slamming into her again, sending her scrambling to grip onto his shoulders, nails digging painfully into her bite. He continued drawing out almost completely before thrusting back into her as much as he could, rewarded with a sharp gasp each time. He picked up his pace quickly, until he was feeling close. As if the General could tell, she pushed her hips out farther, now only supported by the wall on her upper back, and suddenly the heat building in the base of his abdomen snapped like a volcano and he was spilling, ridiculous groans from his throat and white, splattering seed from his dick and all could do to not collapse on the General was throw a hand out onto the wall behind her and lean, panting heavily until the red tinging the edges of his vision faded, and they both realized what they had done.

After half a minute, he chanced a look up at Nora, who looked equally dazed.

“You’re bleeding,” she said blithely, scraping a nail on the cut beneath his eye, which had beads of blood gathering from exertion. He swatted her hand away and she let him, holding her wrist away as her eyes searched his face. For what, Maxson didn’t know.

And he didn’t have time to ponder, either, because a knock at the door snapped them both to attention, and they broke apart, shame setting in before the afterglow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s hard for me to write smut because I hate the word cock. Like, I’m fine reading it. But I can’t physically type it out. I typed it out just then and almost cried. Thanks for reading.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preston becomes president of the Babysitter's Club, where his only clients are Maxson and Nora.

Once, she had asked Nate what it was like to be shot at. He didn’t like talking about the war, but she had been curious. “I tell you about my work,” she had insisted. He had stared at her for a few minutes, before he finally answered.

“You get cold,” he had said. “I didn’t even feel the pain until they got me to the medbay, half an hour later. The doctor said it was shock. And for some reason, the pain made me happy. Like I was alive.”

He had been only been right about feeling alive, was what Nora thought vaguely as she blinked at the hole in her bicep where the bullet had entered, but hadn’t come out. Her entire left arm felt like it was on fire, but it was no match for the blood boiling up her chest and neck, filling her icy veins and pumping her heart dangerously against her ribcage; it was the hottest she had ever felt since she left the damn vault, and she quickly realized the source of the heat wasn’t the gushing wound. It came from deep within her belly, a pulsing fury at the cruelness of the new world she had woken up to, as she stared, dumbfounded, at the dead raider before her.

“Hey, up here, on the balcony!” A voice called out to her.

She snapped her gaze upwards; the old museum was harshly backlit by the sun, but she could faintly make out a gloved hand waving to her and the distinctive red glow of what she would later learn was a laser musket.

Squinting, hungry, and furious, she yelled back, “Who the fuck are you?”

—

When Preston Garvey was seventeen, he had signed up to the Minutemen help his fellow people, to protect his family and friends, to make the Commonwealth a better, brighter place to live.

He had not signed up to referee the world’s pettiest shouting match.

And yet it was the latter that he found himself doing more often than the former these days.

He knew Nora was plenty capable and he usually let her go off wherever she wanted; she had been a fiery, unstoppable force since the first day he met her, fueled by anger at the post-War world and not much caring where that took her. Preston had taken it upon himself to nudge her in the right direction, and the system worked well. Until she came back from Fort Hagen with a knapsack full of bloody brain bits, and he saw the tiny etched logo on one of the components and realized she was headed somewhere much, much bigger than herself and the Minutemen. And the Brotherhood was a necessary, though cautionary, part of the solution.

But it seemed to be taking the General a while to understand that. And frankly, Preston’s usually never-ending patience was running thin.

So when a private informed him of the Elder’s vertibird racing steadily towards the Castle, he had thanked the nervous young woman for the information, dismissed her, and returned to enjoying his hot lunch, a hearty vegetable stew. Farm fresh ingredients. The type of sustenance that used to be rare, before the Minutemen.

When he heard and felt the door of the General’s office to his slam violently, he simply turned up the radio on his desk to drown out the subsequent yelling echoing from next door, humming peacefully to the pre-War tunes, solely intent on finishing his stew.

When his bowl was finally empty, the lieutenant general sighed, piled all his dishes together, and left his office, passing the General’s office purposefully and returning his dirty plates to the commissary, where Codsworth happily accepted them in exchange for a cold bottle of water. He returned to his office and sipped on it casually as he filled in some paperwork.

Finally, when he truly had nothing else to do, he tossed the empty bottle into the trash, picked up his laser musket, and walked out of his office, stopping just outside the General’s door. He took a moment to remind himself of all the good work Nora had done so far, before raising a gloved hand and knocking on the door.

A few seconds later, the door cracked open, and Nora’s flushed face peeked out at him. “Yes?”

“Everything alright, General?” Preston asked casually. “Sounds pretty hectic in there.”

She cleared her throat before pursing her lips and glancing upwards, as if thinking. “Oh, there was a radroach...You know how I hate those things.”

Preston raised an eyebrow. “And you usually yell at radroaches?”

She grinned up at him. “Yep.”

“And the radroaches usually yell back?”

He waited expectantly until Nora sighed, stepping back and letting the door swing open. “Elder Maxson may have been helping me. With the radroach. He was just leaving, though.”

She kicked the door fully open before striding out, pulling her coat over her shoulders as as she pushed past her lieutenant, a whirlwind of hair and coattails. Preston opened his mouth to protest, but the aforementioned Elder had marched out behind her, briskly stalking away in the opposite direction, and clearly pissed.

“Nora, what the hell—” Preston began, looking back and forth between the receding back of the Brotherhood leader and his General, exasperated.

“Might need to deal with that.” Nora muttered, continuing to speed down the other hall, strapping her Pip-boy to her wrist, before patting down her pockets.

“And _where_ the hell are you going?” Preston demanded, jogging to keep up with her rapid pace.

“Out,” Nora huffed.

“I thought you were resting. You’re due for the Glowing Sea in a week.”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ll be back.”

“General—”

She turned a sharp corner into the courtyard, slamming the door behind her. With a groan, Preston rushed back down the other hall, where the prominent bulk of the Elder was still receding quickly into the distance. He called out his title, and the Elder courteously slowed until Preston caught up with him.

“Your patience is admirable, Lieutenant Garvey,” Maxson remarked, while Preston tried to catch his breath. “The General could learn a lot from you.”

Preston laughed nervously. “I have faith in General Nora which she has reinforced several times over. All of the Minutemen do. She’s certainly steadfast in her beliefs but she always gets things done, and right.”

Maxson made some gruff sound of acknowledgment.

“So what could the Minutemen help you with today, Elder?” Preston asked, offering what he hoped was a comfortable smile.

“The General has already made it _extremely_ clear that nothing can be done,” Maxson replied, through gritted teeth. “But thank you, lieutenant.”

The Elder set off again, leaving Preston scrambling to follow him out to the back bay of the Castle, where his vertibird was waiting, chopper blades beating heavily in the air.

“Well, our door is always open, Elder,” Preston called out over the noise. He turned to leave, but stopped himself to add, “Oh, and I don’t suppose the General informed you, but we’ll be switching the greenhouse team in a few weeks’ time to a smaller crew. A family, actually.”

The Elder spun around. “What do you mean?” He asked.

Preston gave him a curious look. “The Slog team are only temporary—none of them are really skilled with greenhousing, but these crazy raiders burned down their sleeping quarters so we just needed to relocate our people until we could wipe the raiders out. It should have been in the General’s reports to you.”

The young leader blinked, looking dumbfounded for a millisecond before demanding, “Where are these raiders located?”

“The old ironworks by the marina,” Preston answered. “We’re just waiting to assemble a team strong enough—”

The Elder cut him off sharply. “We’ll take care of it.” Before boarding his waiting vertibird, leaving Preston to just stare open-mouthed as it ascended to the sky, before becoming a pinprick in the distance.

—

“Jeez, lady, you okay?”

With an annoyed sigh, Nora looked up at the mercenary peering down at her, a mix of trepidation and disgust permeating his pointed face. “I paid you to shoot and kill. Constantly talking was not part of the deal.”

The mercenary shrugged lightly, gesturing with the barrel of his sniper rifle at the beaten face of the raider she was kneeling in front of, torso littered with shotgun pellets and brain matter leaking out onto the concrete. “You seem to have a handle on the shooting and killing.”

Nora stood up, wiping the bloodied butt of her weapon absentmindedly on her coat, and kicking the body over so the engorged eyeballs weren’t looking at her. “Whatever. The place is clear now. We should set up for the night.”

The hired gun looked skeptically around the outpost. “Yeah, alright—let’s not sleep next to these bodies, though.”

The pair moved to the other side of the camp, and Nora began work on a small fire while the merc dragged ratty sleeping bags over to the furthest corner from the carnage. She didn’t look up when he settled next to her on a cinderblock, warming his hands over the gentle flames.

“So this place is gonna be a settlement?”

“After some clean up, yes.”

The mercenary whistled, nodding his head. “You’re doing good work.”

Nora shrugged, turning the collars of her coat upwards to shield herself against the brisk chill of the night air. “Someone has to.”

“You know, I was pretty surprised to see you back in Goodneighbor.” The mercenary slid his rifle off his shoulder, placing it gently on the ground. “Didn’t seem like you had the best time last time you were there. From what I heard, anyway.”

Hairs prickled on the back of Nora’s neck despite being wrapped up tight in her coat, and her eyes darkened.

“Do you ever shut up, merc?” She snapped. “Or do I have to pay for that, too?”

“Hey, I don’t mean anything by it. We’ve all lost people out here.”

Nora didn’t answer, instead plopping down on her sleeping bag, looking up at the sky. It was one of the few things that had remained the same before and after her long, long sleep, and she felt the edges of her brain go hazy with fatigue as she gazed at the stars.

To her dismay, the merc’s voice rang through the air again, filled with an unwarranted amount of empathy.

“I’d be fu—freaking pissed, too,” he remarked casually. “If I had to watch my wife die again. I get it.”

“‘Get it’?” Nora questioned bitingly.

The mercenary mimed bashing in a corpse’s head. “The anger. I got lucky, I guess. I still have my son. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t.”

Nora clenched her jaw tightly before responding. “What was your name again?”

“MacCready.”

“Fuck off, MacCready.”

She rolled over on the sleeping bag and shut her eyes tight, waiting for the reluctant footsteps of the mercenary to fade into the distance. When she was sure he was gone, she let a single tear slide out, and sucked in a tight breath, wondering if more would follow.

When the floodgates opened, all she could hear was Kellogg’s voice and his and her hands moving as one as they raised his pistol together and shot her husband in the face.

The next morning, she awoke with her usual amount of vigor. MacCready didn’t comment on the puffy rings around her eyes or her fervent energy as they silently stacked raider bodies into one corner of the camp, and diligently sipped on the coffee she handed him as she radioed the nearest checkpoint to send some personnel to their coordinates.

They continued waiting in silence until a small squad in blue arrived with materials for a radio beacon. After a small chat with her men, she nodded and turned back to the expectant merc. 

"You're fired, MacCready," she said, before slinging her shotgun over her shoulder and briskly walking off.

She worked better alone, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can someone tell me why my last chapter wasn't shown as an update? 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patchups, haircuts, and checkups: tales from Knight-Captain Cade's medical bay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for a medical mention of suicide. Also, I would give Maxson a new cut every chapter if it was viable. Budding hemophiliac over here.

“I would say this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done,” Knight-Captain Cade sighed as he re-entered the medbay, looking at his clipboard. “But I was around for the deathclaw incident, unfortunately. So, second stupidest thing.”

Maxson didn’t say anything, muscles tensing uneasily as he sat on the edge of the gurney, focusing on his hazy reflection in the steel wall facing him. The cool air was soothing on the angry red patches covering a majority of his chest, forearms, and back, and his lower abdomen was suitably patched up, the shards of glass previously embedded within lying on a towel next to him.

Cade was the only officer aboard the ship who got away with lecturing him, and he was right, regardless. No soldier ends up in the Prydwen’s medbay at two in the morning by doing something smart.

Cade ripped a sheet of paper off his clipboard, handing it to the Elder absentmindedly, before rummaging around his cabinets. “You’ll need two stimpacks in the badly affected areas twice a day. Take Med-X tonight so you can sleep, and I can give you salve for scarring but...”

The doctor trailed off. His implication was obvious enough, unimpressed gaze flicking over the scars already littering Maxson’s body.

“I don’t need salve,” Maxson grumbled.

“Great. Now, just some last minute questions...I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you were doing,” Cade said, pen poised over his clipboard.

Maxson stared straight ahead pointedly, the sting of the burns where the molotovs and flamers of the Forged had caught him slowly creeping up his skin as the effects of Cade’s numbing cream faded.

Cade heaved another sigh, flipping a page. “How have things been with you, Elder? Stressed?”

“Fine,” Maxson snapped. Cade raised his eyebrows. “A little stressed. Not more than usual.”

“There are chems to help with that.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Cade tutted lightly as he scrawled his notes, the Elder peering over the top of the doctor’s ever-mysterious clipboard.

“‘Mental health concerns’?” Maxson spat, before the knight-captain pulled his notes away from his leader’s scrutinizing eyes. “The hell does that mean? Suicide watch?”

“I’m afraid I must adhere to a doctor’s code of patient confidentiality.”

“As your Elder, I’d advise you to adhere to a soldier’s code of following orders.”

Cade placed his clipboard down on the side table, looking sternly at the livid Elder.

“You hold the most stressful position on this ship, deal with death and violence nearly every minute of the day, and a history of acting out with very little regard to your own life. Then you come to me at two in the morning with fresh second-degree burns all over your body, having not told anyone where you went or what you did. Quite frankly, Arthur, if you weren’t on suicide watch, I wouldn’t be doing my job.”

Maxson couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he just seethed as Cade rummaged around his cabinets, curating an assortment of chems into a paper bag, and dropping them in his lap, before opening the door to the medbay and gesturing out to the hall.

“You’re free to go. Come to me when you need your bandages changed.” The unimpressed doctor looked at the singed tips of Maxson’s beard. “And maybe schedule yourself in for a haircut.”

—

In the week following what the General would later refer to as the greatest lapse in judgment in her entire life, and what the Elder would simply refuse to mention even with innuendo, some semblance of peace settled over the Commonwealth.

The General promptly took to the southeast Commonwealth in a whirlwind of fury and explosive shotgun shells, setting up checkpoints and clearing trade routes until the entire area ran blue. For every raider and Gunner she took down, she briefly imagined Maxson’s smug face before eagerly pulling the trigger, and that image alone was more invigorating than any R&R Preston would have insisted for her. When she returned, she was freckled from the sun and flush with happiness, her smile faltering only when Preston reminded her of her appointment at the Prydwen at 11.

Meanwhile, the Elder hadn’t left his office in several days, between meetings, paperwork, and a sudden aversion to his observation deck; even when he was facing away from the Minutemen’s headquarters, he was too harshly reminded what had happened within its stone walls.  Even after his burns and stitches had mostly healed over, inklings of shame traveled through his veins; just enough to avert his attention for a few minutes at a time. But the Brotherhood had had a particularly spectacular week in the Commonwealth, from recovered tech to an unprecedented number of new recruits, and he had chose to focus on these victories, though ruminations about her caught up with him during the night.

It wasn’t the act itself that caused him to get hot with embarrassment in the blackness of his room, turning huffily onto his side in his single rack as if to shield himself from the world. He was twenty goddamn years old, and it had been expressed to him quite explicitly when he was first given Elder, though at the time he was embarrassed that it was even brought up by the entire board of older Brotherhood conservatives, that he could, as they had so delicately phrased it, “fraternize externally”, with the assumption that when there was a suitable partner for him that had risen to an appropriate rank so as to not cause gossip, he would then abide by what was written in the Codex. They probably did not mean that he could fuck the leader of a strategically advantageous militia in a territory they were trying to control, in her office, against a wall.

No, it was the complete lack of self-control that shamed him out of sleep. The act itself and his violent parade at Saugus Ironworks afterwards were not conducive to the leader he was trying to be. He hadn’t made Elder by acting impulsively on every thought that crossed his mind. That may be the General’s prerogative, but her crash and burn was inevitable, and he had no wish to partake. His men had too much faith in him to not lead them into disaster, and frankly, he owed them that much.

So at 1100 hours when he had signed off on the last of a mountain of paperwork, finally letting his pen clatter against his desk, he defiantly shook all remaining thoughts of the General out of his head, and headed back to the medical bay for his haircut.

For being the Commonwealth’s greatest hopes, they sure lacked foresight.

—

Nora didn’t know what she was expecting when she turned in to the Prydwen’s medical bay, but it certainly wasn’t the jarring sight of an oddly peaceful Arthur Maxson, massive shoulders relaxed instead of at attention, head tilted back ever so slightly and eyes closed as a surly older man in bulky fatigues tended to the foam-covered facial hair covering his neck and jaw.

It was a bit like seeing your elementary school teacher at the supermarket buying generic brand cereal, if your elementary school teacher had enough firepower to level the planet.

The illusion shattered quickly when the Elder jerked his head upwards, stiffening up immediately when his eyes focused on her, eyes alighting with their usual anger. His jaw fell open, but before he could speak, a stern voice cut through.

“I told you not to move,” the fatigues scolded, pressing the damp cloth over his shoulder against Maxson’s neck. “Christ, two centimeters over and it could’ve been your artery. I assume you’re the General?”

“Nora,” she introduced cheerily, extending a hand.

“Knight-Captain Cade,” the man replied, ignoring her gesture. “General Nora, if you could apply some pressure while I get some antiseptic...”

Nora grinned when she saw Maxson glare in protest, gleefully taking over the cloth and clamping another hand down on his shoulder, heat radiating through the slippery vinyl of the cape draped around him.

He grimaced, surely not from the force of her touch but more at the thought that it was her, but otherwise remained silent. When she was sure Cade had left the room, she swiveled the Elder’s chair slightly so she could see his eyes in the tiny mirror propped up on a side table in front of him.

They looked furious.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Maxson asked, voice low.

“I believe we agreed to one of your newfangled suits of power armour,” Nora replied. “Which requires a _Brotherhood_ -certified medical check.”

Maxson blinked, then retorted. “You reek of the wasteland.”

Nora leaned down into his neck, digging her nails deep into his shoulder. “Hmm, you reek of nothing at all. Busy week?”

The Elder turned his gaze away from the mirror and to the General properly, and fearlessly, she held it. But brick walls don’t catch fire, and Maxson didn’t falter beneath the burning in her eyes.

“Hardly,” he answered, and Nora knew he was lying.

A tense silence fell, her fingers pressing the damp cloth so tightly against Maxson’s neck that she could feel the sticky blood come through. But before the silence became unbearable, Cade’s footsteps alerted them back to professionalism.

“The cut’s too deep, doctor,” Nora informed the knight-captain, snatching her resting hand from Maxson and tucking it safely behind her back, “I think amputation is our best bet.”

“Bandages should work just fine,” Cade replied seriously, taking back the cloth and dabbing antiseptic against the laceration. “Go ahead and take a seat, I’ll conduct your pre-test now.” The Elder beneath him huffed, which Cade promptly ignored. “Despite the Elder’s concerns, General, I can assure you that over forty dedicated years in the medical field and twenty unwilling years in the grooming field have well-equipped me for multi-tasking.”

Nora hopped up onto the edge of a bed, observing with interest as the doctor threw the bloodied cloth away and resumed his work with a fresh, dry one, lathering soap up in his deft surgeon’s hands and running it over the fading bubbles along Maxson’s jaw. The Elder himself leaned back again, lacking his earlier relaxation.

“I used to do that for my husband,” Nora remarked, watching the steely blade catching the light as it ran down the Elder’s neck at an angle. “Of course, he never had interest in growing facial hair until the military told him he couldn’t.”

“Your husband served?” Cade asked, with interest.

Her reply was quieter. “Conscripted.”

She could feel the Elder’s gaze as his eyelids fluttered open and landed on her, burning like a magnifying glass under the sun. Despite her temptation to return it—perhaps earn him another slice in his skin, if she acted quickly enough—she kept her gaze fixed on the doctor, who nodded solemnly. “You should meet with Proctor Quinlan. He would be absolutely fascinated.”

He then began firing off questions about her health history, most of which were barely relevant to her, bones and immune system well-built by the time the bombs scorched the earth. At some point, the doctor’s hands moved from Maxson’s jaw to his shoulders and tapped him gently, and the massive bulk of the Elder rustled out from underneath the vinyl cape and leaned over a sink. Even without his coat, the man held an impressive stance, and Nora vaguely wondered how he had enough time to maintain his shape in between pushing all his pencils.

A stern bark brought her back to attention, where Cade was looking at her unforgivingly. “Final question, and please, answer honestly,” the doctor said. “Have you ever had relations with any species considered non-human?”

If the Elder let out a low chuckle at the question, it was well-covered by the sounds of splashing water.

Nora herself couldn’t quite hold back a smile either, a sharp exhale of air from her nose emerging halfway between a snort and a laugh. “What like...deathclaws?”

“At this point, General, it wouldn’t surprise me,” the doctor sighed.

“A few questionable choices—” She trailed off, knowing full well the Elder was glowering at her from across the room, before coughing delicately. “—with ponytails in college, but all human.”

“Well, you’re certainly more well-behaved than the worst I’ve seen, and healthier than the best,” Cade said. Nora preened, and Maxson appeared to have heard enough, slipping on his hefty coat, which was curiously blackened on the tails. “We’ll check your vitals now, but I assume you’ll be perfectly suited for power armour. And will you be accompanying the General afterwards, Elder?”

“Send for Paladin Danse when you’re done,” Maxson ordered, striding out of the medbay, hands clasped tight behind his back. “I have—things to do.”

An interpolated _better_ seemed sorely missing from his derisive tone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a character-focused/filler chapter, the next few should be more actiony. As always, thanks for reading.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maxson and Nora have different ideas about leading.

The Prydwen was a lot like Maxson.

On the outside, a gleaming, solid fortress. A technological marvel, considering the struggles Nora had faced to get just luke-warm water to spit out of Sanctuary’s water purifier. She flew high and mighty a thousand feet above the earth, and like the Elder within, was well-built and imposing. 

The interior, which Nora didn’t quite acquaint herself with last time she had stormed through the ship, was surprisingly dark for its proximity to the sun, brutalist and utilitarian. Everything was rigidly compartmentalized: medbay here, mess hall there, barracks, armory. The soldier’s bunks were harshly exposed and sparsely decorated. A lone scribe tended to a wilting planter of corn and dead specimens at the far end of the catwalk.

Even dust seemed frightened to settle along the dull, repurposed steel. With amusement, Nora wondered if the Elder had purposely built this ship as a vehicular model of himself on purpose, or if he was just that self-unaware.

“Actually, Elder Maxson only oversaw the final stages of the Prydwen,” Nora’s field trip chaperone, Paladin Danse, was saying. She grumbled at the dispelling of her theory. “She’s been a Brotherhood objective for nearly ten years. Originally, we were going to send her West. But...other priorities took over.”

“That’s fascinating,” Preston said helpfully. Nora rolled her eyes behind the paladin’s back, and Preston gave her a stern look in reply. “How far out is the Brotherhood’s influence?”

“California,” the paladin said, the pride in his voice audible over the clomping of his metal feet. “Though our Eastern chapter is the strongest.”

“Not strong enough to forgo child soldiers, it seems,” Nora muttered to her deputy, eyes darkening as they passed over a group of earnest preteens standing at attention while a knight-sergeant lectured them. 

Too loudly, perhaps, as the paladin perked his head up, slowing to a stop.

“Nearly everybody on this ship began as a squire, including myself and Elder Maxson,” Danse said stiffly. “They are an indispensable part of a noble cause.”

Nora could faintly feel Preston pawing at her elbow as she cocked an eyebrow at the impassive paladin, but she, as usual, ignored her deputy. “Can’t think of a cause noble enough to justify putting children on a warship.”

Before Danse could reply, an arrogant voice cut through from behind her. “The Prydwen isn’t a warship.”

Nora clenched her teeth into a hard smile as she spun around, to greet the now all-too-familiar bulk of the Elder. “Oh? So you’re in Boston for the sights, then?”

“You misinterpreted,” Maxson replied evenly. “We intend to fight on the ground. The Prydwen is simply a vessel, and a fortified one at that. If safety is your concern, the squires rarely leave our base, and if they do, they are under considerable supervision.”

“Kids shouldn’t be on a military base in the first place.”

Maxson gritted his teeth. “And where should they be, General?”

“In school.” Nora faltered for a moment. She hadn’t yet seen a school that wasn’t infested with supermutants or raiders. But Maxson raised an eyebrow and her anger flared so she squared her shoulders and pursued. “Playing outside. Being kids. The Brotherhood’s stolen enough childhoods, don’t you think?”

Preston sucked in an audible breath and behind her, she could hear metal creak as Paladin Danse shifted uncomfortably in his power armor. 

But if her barb had landed where she had aimed on Maxson, he didn’t show it, instead calling over one of the squires and placing an authoritative hand on her shoulder. 

“Squire.”

“Elder Maxson,” the young girl squeaked. She looked up at him, small face beaming with adoration and respect.

The Elder offered some semblance of a kind smile. It struck Nora as shark-like. “Do you want to go play outside?”

The young girl looked confused, eyes darting between all the adults around her. When her curious gaze landed on Nora, the General hastily blinked and looked away.

“Um, not really,” the squire finally answered. She scrunched up her face. “Isn’t that where the mirelurks are?”

Nora could feel what was probably a self-satisfied glare boring into the side of her head coming from the Elder. He dismissed the squire with the wave of his hand.

“Yearly medical checks, clean food and water, and a full education,” Maxson listed off. “Hardly sounds like a stolen childhood.”

Nora thought about it as she steeled herself towards the Elder. “I suppose you’re right.”

The room halted with surprise. A faint bewilderment flitted across Maxson’s face, before he too squared his shoulders, looking beyond her. 

“Yes,” he sneered, locking his jaw in place. “I suppose I am."

And before she had the chance to reach into her boot for the only holdout weapon Kells hadn’t managed to confiscate from her and gouge the superiority out of the Elder’s eyes, Preston was ushering her towards the workshop, muttering  _ leave it be, General  _ out of the corner of his mouth.

—

“Be honest,” the General said, turning around with a grin. “Does this make me look fat?”

She gestured down to the metal vestibule she was currently encased in, her head comically tiny against the shiny width of the T-51, searching for someone to receive her joke. At the furthest workshop table, Proctor Ingram was ignoring her, tinkering away at the helmet. Garvey simply gave her a stern glare.

Danse was the only one who dignified her with a response, shaking his head. “Appearances are unimportant. The most important thing is that you’ll be protected.”

She sighed, crossing her huge metal arms as best as she could over her bulky chest and tapped—or rather, clomped—one fat steel boot, as the paladin began tinkering with the helmet attachments. 

“Will you not be needing a suit, Lieutenant?” Arthur asked, turning away from the scene to face perhaps the only sensible member of the Minutemen, whose firm grip on his laser musket never seemed to loosen. “We have spares.”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Garvey replied. “The Castle is pretty safe nowadays, with all the artillery.”

Maxson raised an eyebrow. “Are you not traveling with the General to the Glowing Sea?”

The man looked surprised. “General Nora usually travels alone. It’s pretty well-known among the Minutemen, though we always try to offer our support. She prefers it."

“Seems dangerous, letting your leader run off on her own.”

Garvey shrugged. “You know how she, er, to speak frankly, gets,” he said. Arthur held back a smile. “Unless she gets seriously hurt on her own...nothing has proved her wrong yet. And to be fair, she works extremely well by herself.”

Maxson paused. He and the General had that in common.

“And your men did great work with the Forged,” Garvey added hastily, at Maxson’s silence. He seemed to be a nervous chatter. “How are the Finches settling in?”

“Fine,” Maxson snapped quickly. Then, lest he startle the anxious man, he added, “Fine. The Brotherhood appreciates your help.”

Garvey beamed. “Well, the Minutemen really appreciate your help, and patience with the General. Her methods are...unorthodox, but her head and her heart are in the right place.” 

He sounded so awfully genuine that Arthur almost believed him.

—

Preston had been all-too-gleeful to inform Nora that the Elder had invited them to stay for dinner, despite the man himself sitting across from her sinking deeper into regret as each moment passed.

For Nora, though, it seemed the perfect opportunity to investigate. She flashed a grin at Maxson as he sawed at his steak—using the proper knife and fork, unlike most of the other soldiers in the canteen gnawing away at the dinners—the sleeve of his immense coat lifting up briefly to reveal thick white bandages wrapped around his wrist.

“What happened to your arm, Elder?”

Maxson stiffened, casting a sidelong glance at Paladin Danse and Preston, who were too deeply engaged in a discussion about laser weapons to give notice to their respective leaders. 

“Had an accident,” he grunted in reply. “Fell.”

“Hm. And your coat fell too?” She gestured towards the weakened leather around his lapels. 

The Elder grimaced. It was almost too easy—prosecutor and defendant. She’d had enough practice.

“Clothes tend to follow the person.”

She let out a small chuckle. “Seems like a pretty bad injury.” He held rigid eye contact with her, chewing slowly. When it became evident he wouldn’t comment, she continued questioning before the silence became a weakness. “What happened? Some really intense paperwork made you lose your balance?”

He deliberately finished his mouthful of food before answering. “Gym mishap.”

“Unfortunate,” Nora said solemnly. They stared at each other for a few moments, before Maxson broke his gaze away, looking back down at his plate. “So you gym with your coat on?”

That must’ve done it for Maxson, because he slammed his utensils down suddenly as Nora jumped backwards, hands gripping the table, ready to stand. Or fight. The Elder narrowed his eyes, but a bark of laughter interrupted the two of them.

“That’s insane!” Preston cried out, shaking his head. 

“It’s entirely possible,” Danse shrugged, looking nonplussed. “Might explode your weapon, but it’s worth a try.”

Nora looked on, bewildered. “What?”

“Paladin Danse is suggesting we overcharge the capacitors on our muskets  _ and _ add an automatic barrel with infinite cranks—can you imagine?” Preston laughed. “God, you could probably take out an entire group of supermutants.”

Her lieutenant resumed conversation with the paladin, excitedly questioning him more. At least he was having fun.

Nora turned back to her dinner less enthusiastically. It wasn’t as fun antagonizing the Elder when her closest friend and number two seemed to be getting along so well with his men.

Maxson pounced on her disinclination like a dog. 

“So you’re venturing to the Glowing Sea alone,” he remarked.

“Yeah, well. All my radiation-proof friends were booked,” Nora said sweetly. “And I didn’t feel like ordering some poor lackey to accompany me.”

“Teamwork is often a stronger force than weapons or intellect,” the Elder replied casually. “I believe we teach that to the squires during their first year of education.”

“Oh? And is that before or after you teach them how to lob a grenade?”

Maxson chuckled. Or at least attempted to, a flash of teeth baring like a wolf.

“It’s a dangerous choice, is all. Forgive me for being concerned.” He waved his fork dismissively before delicately placing its contents into his mouth. 

She shot him a haughty look. “Forgive me for mistaking your concern for arrogance.”

“General, as foolish as your methods may be, we do both want the same thing,” Maxson declared. He had found his rhythm and kept it. “Destroy the Institute. Save the Commonwealth.”

“Kindly consider you who call foolish as you dine on our food, Elder,” Nora snapped, tightening her grip around her dinner knife. “If you can’t provide for your own soldiers and you don’t fight for them either, what’s left?”

She sawed at her steak pointedly, both to punctuate and to ease the frantic energy building in her veins. 

“Leaders do more than provide and fight,” Maxson replied coolly. “They inspire. Coordinate. Realize that the world is bigger than them—all difficult things to do if you’re dead. Even worse if you’ve died in a selfish pursuit of heroics.”

“I am not—” Nora sucked in a deep breath, closing her eyes briefly. A familiar heat rose up from her chest, creeping its way up to her cheeks. “If I strung along a wasteland Joe to die every time I got scared, there wouldn’t be a Commonwealth left to save.”

Faintly, she realized that her increased decibel had silenced their table. Maxson dwelled in the quiet, observing her with stony blue eyes. From his seat diagonal to her on the table, Preston kept sending her furtive glances which she refused to acknowledge, preferring to scrutinize the Elder before her.

“I am not fighting for myself. I’m fighting for  _ them _ ,” she emphasized, increasing her volume again. All around them, soldiers started dropping their conversations to focus on their centered table. “And quite frankly, I'd rather die on the field than live lording over the people I'm pretending to help.”

Somehow, she found herself standing, with Maxson matching her stance, looming over her like a barbed wire fence.

“Is that what you think the Brotherhood is doing, General?” Maxson asked, through gritted teeth.

Preston hastily tried to interject. “Of course n—” 

“Yes,” Nora cut off, glaring upwards at the Elder, before snatching her coat from the back of her chair. “Enjoy your meal, Elder. I have shit to do.”

She turned on her heel and stormed towards the flight deck, Preston hastily apologizing before scurrying after her. Maxson was left standing alone, the realization of his white-knuckled grip on his steak knife causing it to clatter onto the tray gracelessly. The entire room was silent, and suddenly very, very hot.

"Dismissed," he barked aimlessly at the mess hall, though it was he who stalked off, the lingering stares of three dozen soldiers following him out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay - I got really stuck on this chapter! I kind of regretted making them fuck so early (lol) because now I'm struggling to build the tension back up. but that's what I get for being horny on main. anyway thanks for reading & commenting!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maxson and Nora take one step forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> blah blah, I suck at updating. at least this chapter is extra long :)

The mission in the Glowing Sea was supposed to be two weeks.

At two weeks and three days, Maxson observed tan coattails and the whisper of a laser musket in the reflection of his observation window as Preston Garvey descended down to the command deck to speak in hushed tones with Captain Kells. The man was a wreck and Maxson could feel it despite his avoidant eyes.

But he had paperwork to do and a Commonwealth to save, so he swallowed any sympathetic words and simply gave the lieutenant a curt nod of acknowledgment, though a certain tension crept slowly up his neck, and he wasn’t quite thinking about his paperwork anymore.

Less than half an hour later, both Kells and the lieutenant had made their way back up to command deck, murmuring quietly. Out of instinct, Maxson straightened—but did not turn, though the perk of his ears and the whitening of his knuckles around his grip on the railing may have clued them in on his eavesdropping.

“She’s an idiot for going alone,” Preston was muttering, though he stiffened as soon as the words left his mouth, “Don’t tell her that, of course.”

Maxson held back a small smile, which dropped from his face abruptly as the two men bid each other goodbye, Kells with some hushed reassurance and Garvey with eager gratuity. When the lancer-captain’s slowed to a stop behind him, he finally turned, eyeing the captain evenly.

“Report,” Maxson ordered.

“As you can imagine, the General didn’t fare too well in the Glowing Sea,” Kells shrugged. Then paused. “Well, actually, I suppose we can’t confirm that. But she _is_ lost. Comms cut out four days ago, less than eighteen hours before she was due back at the nearest Minutemen outpost.”

“Anything significant from her last status report?”

Kells shook his head. “No. The mission was completed, she got what she needed from the mutie. Tracking on her power armor puts her less than two miles out from the edge of the sea when her connection died. We’re pulling a vertibird patrol from the city tonight, sending a crew out tomorrow.”

“Send two patrols and the medevac,” Maxson interrupted. “By tonight.”

Kells raised his eyebrows. “That will put an extremely heavy strain on our forces.”

“She has the information from the Institute scientist?”

Kells swallowed. “Yes.”

Maxson steeled himself. “Then ensuring her return is our top priority.”

In the name of diplomacy, and all.

—

For a few more days, the Castle remained quiet on the status of their General, though they generously informed him that the power armor he had lent was beyond repair. A battered file landed on Maxson’s desk two days after the rescue effort, and within was just a lone piece of paper scrawled with notes and diagrams detailing some sort of microchip. He promptly passed it on to Quinlan, but with little else to work with, he refocused himself on the greater mission at hand.

Unfortunately, Liberty Prime was at a standstill, with his efforts in the city center waning. Two squads of knights had suffered substantial injuries from a horde of super mutants in Back Bay, and despite being unable to be airlifted back to the Prydwen until many hours later, they were all in a relatively stable condition. Cade was working overtime caring for the soldiers, Quinlan had busied himself with dissecting the General’s report, and Ingram and Teagan were working steadily with repairs and collections, trying to move Liberty Prime forward.

Maxson remembered quite fondly of the times when his work was more tangible. Fighting on the ground, seeing the progress with his own eyes, instead of as percentages and bar graphs on his desk. His day consisted mostly of consolidating information from his endless meetings into reports for the high elders back in the Capital and further out west, or crafting his next speech with a high scribe taking notes.

In the few minutes he had to spare, he found himself idling, gazing unblinkingly out at the Commonwealth. For all the numbers and injured soldiers, it looked the same; as trashed and weary as the day the Prydwen had arrived. Buildings remained ridden with waste and bullet holes, the skyline occasionally devolving into a haze of green radiation. The unchanging view left within him an itch, hot and persistent, which no amount of pacing nor barked orders seemed to scratch.

Maybe he enjoyed the peace. Or maybe he had just convinced himself he did.

Then, a week later, the Prydwen was attacked.

From the command deck, Maxson saw the mortar shells as small black flecks in the sky before he felt the floor shake beneath him as they impacted with the ocean. The entire ship blew back from the explosion, and he could barely steady himself before racing down to the bridge where Kells was already barking orders to a group of murmuring, nervous soldiers.

“Incoming fire! Secure the base—Elder Maxson, sir.” Kells straightened himself as every soldier offered a hasty salute.

“Yes, at ease. What the fuck is going on?”

“Artillery fire coming west of Fort Strong,” Kells reported. “Could be muties trying to reclaim their territory, though we’ve had no reports of suspicious activity—we’ll verify once someone gets me some _fucking binoculars_ —”

“Binoculars here, sir,” a knight squeaked from behind them. Kells snatched it from her hands a peered through them, before letting out an exasperated sigh. “Call off the birds. And tell the men at Fort Strong to stand down.”

“What is it?” Maxson snapped. “Any other damages?”

“An old airplane on the ground caught fire, no injuries reported. Some rubble landed on the banks, and north side barricades have collapsed,” Kells rattled off, before holding out the binoculars with a battered sigh. “And uh—well, just take a look.”

Maxson snatched the binoculars out of his hands and squinted across the bay through the dissipating smoke, which revealed—

“I’m going to fucking kill that woman,” Maxson muttered.

At least it was something to do.

—

If Nora tried _really_ hard, the mutfruit juice she had just been handed could almost resemble a sort of bittersweet plum-and-apple juice amalgam, with just enough exotic, irradiated tang to bring about memories of summers approximately two hundred years ago.

Not quite, though.

The beach she was sitting on, for one, was slightly tempered by the sight of a bloated, washed up dolphin with its belly ripped to shreds. Waves lapped up onto the shore, but there was the distinct lack of laughter, chatter, and people to accompany the picturesque view she was gazing out upon.

And like that, she was back in the wasteland. The beautiful seaside had once been a favorite destination of hers, but it reeked too strongly of dead flesh and toxic rain for her to completely relax.

It was a home now, to a small family just trying to make the best of their situation; a tiny mutfruit farm poked out of the sand, and the mother was shoveling fertilizer across the roots of each tree. While she was in the Glowing Sea, Preston had sent a small group of men to secure their location, after the father had chanced an attempt at radioing for the Minutemen. Raiders had been routinely attacking their farmstead at night, and they had been on the brink of starvation. Her crew had cleared the raider base, added them to their provisioner’s list, and when she had returned, she had seen the tactical utility in their location—flanked by the Brotherhood to the south, thriving farms with pockets of supermutants and raiders to the northwest. Erecting artillery had been a no-brainer, and she had told her doctor that beachside relaxation would help her recover.

She pushed her sunglasses up her nose with a grumble and set her glass down in the sand.

A tiny shadow approached her. “That was wicked! Can I try?”

“Yes,” Nora replied, smiling down at the resident child, whose sunburnt face was widened with a toothy grin. “When you’re eighteen, you can enlist at any Minutemen outpost, and after we process your application and you go through our standard training, you can responsibly fire as much artillery as you desire.”

The kid’s face fell, and the father gently ushered him back into their house, converted from a kayak rental booth, to speak with some privates about the logistics of having heavy artillery ten feet away from their family home.

Next to her, on a dilapidated plastic table, her ham radio emitted a burst of static, before Preston’s voice came through.

“That sounded like a success, General. How are you holding up?”

“Thanks, Preston. And my ordered bedrest has been great,” she yawned, holding the mic to her lips. “You can get a surprising amount done on the beach.”

“Well. Make sure you prioritize your health.” There was a pause, and Nora swore she heard concern in the empty static. “And you’re sure you told the Brotherhood you’d be testing artillery today?”

She coughed lightly. “Yeah, I’m...pretty sure?”

“ _General_ —”

“I sent them a letter before the exercise,” Nora interrupted. It was the truth; she _had_ sent a letter, about twenty minutes before she had blasted artillery at their feet. She faintly wondered how long it would take a brahmin to walk around the harbor. “Don’t worry. Your stress becomes my stress, and the doc says that’ll impede my recovery.”

Probably no more than drinking _definitely_ irradiated fruit juice two days after nearly dying from radiation exposure, but still.

“Yeah, yeah. Just making sure, General. Get some rest, and _real_ rest this time, okay?”

“Will do.”

He clicked off, and Nora leaned back in the beach lounger, eyes sliding closed. Rest and relaxation. She lit a cigarette, bitter smoke tasting better than the mutfruit, and a fair bit more refreshing. A cool, salty breeze blew over her face, and birds chirped in the distance—the apocalypse still had birds, at least. Less people, less laughter, and less manners, but it still had birds. Like this, she could almost lose herself. It could spring break, she figured. She could be celebrating a birthday with the girls, or taking a weekend trip with Nate.

Then vertibird blades echoed in the distance, and she blinked. That didn’t usually happen during holidays.

She sighed and put her cigarette out as sand crunched beneath heavy boots, steadily approaching her. They slowed to a stop directly behind her, and she reluctantly took her sunglasses off, tilting her head backwards.

“Elder,” she leered, squinting up at his bulk. “How may I help you?”

He spoke casually, though his posture was stiff and restrained, hands stuffed deep into his pockets. If she could see them, she would presume they were white-knuckled and tight-fisted.  “Offering to pay damages for your little stunt would be a good place to start.”

“We were testing artillery today. Great vantage point, this place, don’t ya think?”

She tucked her sunglasses into the collar of her shirt and turned around to peer up at him straight.

“Some might construe it as an act of war.” He tilted his head to the side, and Nora reluctantly stood. Still weak from radiation, the world spun slightly at her sudden movement, and she rubbed her eyes erratically to adjust to the change of light.  It was impressive, really, how one man could block out so much sunlight. “A warning would suit better the next time, to avoid any undue retaliation.”

“You didn’t get my letter? I wrote in advance.” She checked her Pip-boy nonchalantly. “I think the messenger should be delivering it to the Prydwen as we speak.”

She flashed him a wide smile, but he didn’t flinch.

“Perhaps better aim, then.”

They stared at each other for a moment, though they kept their distance. If their hastily-buried one-off affair had done anything, it had shamed them both away from the hot-breathed brawls and voice-cracking shouts of previous clashes. Weaknesses exposed, they had silently and separately agreed to pull back and manage themselves from afar; if Nora’s men peeked through the house window and witnessed them, they might see two collected leaders having a placid discussion. But the tension was present in their shoulders and straightened backs, and it was an exercise in patience to see who would crack first.

Neither would back down.

“I think my aim was just fine, Elder.”

Maxson finally grimaced. “Someone could have gotten hurt.” A frown flitted across her face, because somehow the humor of sending a few artillery shells towards the Prydwen had faded when he said those words. She hadn’t quite considered the possibility. His brows furrowed together with distaste as he added, “You really do only think of yourself.”

Nora dug her heels into the sand, smoothing down the front of her coat. Her hands curled into fists, but the flesh of her palms were still raw and bruised from where they had been exposed to the Glowing Sea. “I nearly died last week so we could have a chance at the Institute.”

“Yeah, you and half the knights I had in the city,” Maxson snapped. “So are you wanting an itemized list of damages, or would you prefer to be billed?”

She paused, and her hands unfurled. Looking up at the Elder, she saw more clearly the dark circles pooling under his eyes, and the permanent tension set into his jaw. Twenty years old, but he held in his shoulders a much greater weight, staring down at her with a narrowed, unflinching gaze. She wondered briefly if he saw the same in her.

Her journey to the Glowing Sea hadn’t been easy. Traveling to Virgil had been easy enough, in the almost unbelievably lucky way that things usually turned out for her. But after Virgil’s notes were firmly in hand, making her way back to the border had taken a treacherous turn: she had barely gotten away from a swarm of scorpions and bloatflies before a deathclaw had found her. It was effectively scared off by the last of her shotgun shells but had managed to tear apart most of the power armor before doing so, and she was left leaning for hours against its frame, moving only to vomit, and wondering if her world was going to finally end, and properly this time.

Then the vertibirds had found her, and she was dropped back at Somerville outpost. Pumped full of stimpacks and Radaways, Med-X in one arm and saline in the other. Preston had told her that the first thing she said when she regained consciousness was just a weak, barely audible _why?_

She supposed she had learned something then. She didn’t want to dwell on it, though.

“What do you mean?” She asked finally, crossing her arms. Not quite defensively, moreso to quash the pang of guilt that had just run through her stomach. “About your men? Did something happen?”

“What? We redirected our air support to—” He stopped himself with a wave of his hand, taking a deep breath. “I’m not here to talk about—”

“But was it because of me?”

He squinted at her, irate and impatient. “It wasn’t _because_ of anything, it was a tactical decision—look, some of our defenses were damaged from your artillery, so if we could get an estimate on the time or cost to repair them—”

“Stop changing the subject—”

“ _You’re_ changing the subject—”

“Why would you send us help if your forces couldn’t sustain—”

“ _You were the priority_ ,” he finally snapped, each word punctuated with a sharpness that made her wince. He let out an exasperated sigh and pinched bridge of his nose. “No one died, you got your intel, so we all did our jobs. Now if we could _please_ discuss the actual situation at hand, _General_.”

His tone indicated he was done talking about matters from last week, but it didn’t matter, as the two privates exited the family home. Nora jumped at the chance to ignore him, pushing past the Elder and greeting the soldiers with a grin. Behind them, the family filed out with a fresh jug of mutfruit juice.

“How is it?” Nora asked, beaming.

“Great,” one of the soldiers replied. “They don’t want too much attention, so we’ll set up a checkpoint near here. And we’ll reinforce their home in the event that we do need to use the artillery here, so they can have proper protection. In return, they’ll join our supply lines, giving anything extra that they can.”

The other soldier chimed in. “The father was pretty happy, said maybe his mutfruit juice business could really take off if people see Minutemen drinking it.”

“It is indeed drinkable,” Nora chirped, shuddering slightly. She could hear Maxson footsteps behind her, and she made eye contact with the father, gesturing for him to come over with a tilt of her head. “Hey, why don’t you offer Elder Maxson a glass? Best mutfruit juice in the county.”

“I don’t—” Maxson tried to say, before a lukewarm glass was pushed into his hand.

“Consider it a token of our appreciation,” Nora smiled. He took a tentative sip and coughed lightly. “For all the Brotherhood has done for us.”

“The Brotherhood, as in the Brotherhood of Steel?” The father exclaimed. “So that’s your ship over there?”

Nora couldn’t quite hide her laughter as Maxson got roped into conversation, slipping away to talk to the two soldiers, still idling near the edge of the road.

“Great work today, guys,” she greeted.

They nodded their thanks, before one of them asked, “Is that really the Elder?”

“Yep,” she replied. “He just came for a visit to tell us how impressed he was with the artillery test, which he was definitely previously informed of, and you can tell Preston that.”

“Did you really throw a knife at him?” The other whispered, eyes flicking back and forth between the Elder and her General.

“It was an accident,” Nora said lightly. “You know, sometimes you’re just _really_ excited to open a letter...Anyways, that’s all I need from you guys today. I still have a week on my forced vacation, so if you need more work, talk to Preston.”

The soldiers nodded and walked off, and Nora returned to quite possibly the best part of the conversation that the father and Elder were having that she could have stumbled on.

“It’s definitely like nothing I have tasted before,” Maxson was saying with tight lips.

“Well, if the Brotherhood ever needs the Commonwealth’s best refreshment, I’m just across the harbor,” the father grinned.

“It would be convenient, unfortunately all our supplies come through the Minutemen, so it would be up the General, I suppose,” Maxson replied. He punctuated with a glare towards Nora.

“We will do our best to send you as much mutfruit juice as we can,” Nora said, sidling up to the two men.

The father nodded excitedly. “Y’know, me and my family, we’re a bit far away from all the news and all, but just from what I’ve seen, what with the Brotherhood takin’ care of them mutants down the road and the Minutemen helping our little farm out, I already feel better.” He gestured out towards the city’s skyline. “You guys are really going to make a lot of people’s lives better.”

Maxson and Nora glanced at each other as the father disappeared back into the house.

After a moment, Nora turned to face the Elder fully. “I—the Minutemen really do appreciate your—the Brotherhood’s help.”

Maxson pressed his lips together. “Funny way of showing it.” He started making his way back towards the road, making some hand gesture to the waiting pilot in his idling vertibird.

“I’m _trying_ to say thank you,” Nora huffed, trotting to keep up with him.

Maxson stopped and turned, raising an eyebrow. “By blowing up my ship?”

“By blowing up _around_ your ship, actually.” She grinned. He didn’t seem to find it as funny as she did. “I still don’t really understand the whole bottlecaps as currency thing, but we’ll send whatever is needed to repair the base.”

Tentatively, she stuck a hand out, and Maxson considered it for a moment before grasping it in a firm, warm shake.

“Sorry about your soldiers,” she mumbled. “I’ll send an extra crate of medicine to the airport tomorrow, too.”

“I—oh. Thanks.” He blinked, taken by surprise by her additional offer. “Sergeant Gavil will be in contact with the Castle. About the damages.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Fine.”

She watched his back as it retreated into the distance, where the vertibird was already rumbling its engine, coattails flapping in the heavy wind. Before he climbed aboard, he paused to look back once, a quick flash of blue, and Nora quickly averted her gaze down until the beat of the blades had receded into white noise, and she was sure he was gone.

And then groaned, because she already knew Preston would scold her if she explained why extra supplies were going to the Brotherhood.

But, she supposed, it was in the name of diplomacy, and all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot of fun with this chapter sorting out the logistics of the alliance and trying to figure out how military people talk. I know this is about their relationship but I *clenches fist* love worldbuilding. my google docs would back me up on that. Thanks for reading!
> 
> PS. 
> 
> I tagged this as unstoppable force/immovable object, but who do /you/ think is what? I'm thinking Maxson is the immovable object.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maxson and Nora learn how to work together, now that they are one step forward.

“Can I ask you something?”

Preston looked up, the rising sun blotting in his vision as the General came into view. It was getting cooler in city, and the early morning had brought with it a refreshing chill. Nora was looking strong after her recovery, with color returning to her face, the tip of her nose slightly pink and her jaw nestled within the upturned collar of her coat.

“Anything,” he said. “What’s up?”

She paused, pursing her lips and taking in her environment, eyes sliding upwards at the lofty green door to Diamond City, before looking back at her lieutenant. “Do you think I’m a selfish person?”

He raised his eyebrows, almost emitting a chuckle, before he realized she was being dead serious. He shifted the strap of his laser musket before gesturing around at the middling group of Minutemen gathering in the plaza. “Look around you. Why are you even asking?”

“That’s not really an answer, Preston.”

He shifted nervously under her gaze. “I wouldn’t say you’re  _ selfish _ ,” he said, and as soon as the words left his mouth he realized he had placed extra enunciation on the wrong thing.

“But you would say I’m somewhere in that realm?” Nora asked, raising an eyebrow.

“ _ No _ ,” he replied. “We shouldn’t be getting into this right now, Nora. We have a meeting, and—”

“The Brotherhood aren’t even here yet,” she pointed out, refusing to divide her focus. Preston groaned internally at her unwavering persistence. It translated well on the field, but with personal matters, it became pure stubbornness.  “It’s a yes or no question.”

“I would say you’re very,” Preston paused, thinking. He chose his next words as carefully as he could. “Self-motivated. And extremely hardworking, and—”

“I’m not looking for a performance review,” Nora snapped impatiently. She shoved her hands deep into her pockets and disappeared further into the collar of her jacket. “But I will take your pathetic attempt to dodge around it as a yes.”

She glared at him, and that may have frightened a lower ranked member of the Minutemen, but Preston had known her for a while now, and was accustomed to her behavior. If anything, she was more angry that he had evaded her questioning than his answer itself.

“No, it’s not that —it’s just,” Preston inhaled deeply. He was wholly incapable of lying, which he presumed was why the General was asking him, and not literally anyone else. “I—I guess I don’t know if you’d be helping us if it wasn’t, you know, for your son.”

She blinked, then looked down at her feet.

“That didn’t —I said that wrong,” Preston began. “You’ve done so much for everyone here, it doesn’t matter. People owe their lives to you. Including myself.”

“No, it’s fine. I get what you mean,” she mumbled. She let out another sigh, her breath fogging up in the chill, before a chirpier disposition slid over her face. “Back in Diamond City, huh? This place is a shithole.”

“Hey, this shithole was our claim to fame,” Preston replied back, smiling, but still concerned. A few vertibirds were dotted in the distance, and he reluctantly shifted back to business.

Nora scrunched up her nose. “Should’ve let it rot in hell.”

The rumbling of the vertibirds grew louder and louder, until they were hovering a few blocks over, and echoes of power armored-soldiers jumping down rang through the streets. The General peered up at them, her disgust even more prominent now.

“Why don’t they just blare the national anthem out at full volume while they’re at it?” She grumbled, and Preston reminded himself that she really wasn’t a morning person. At least she was now focused on the Brotherhood’s arrival, and not on trying to interrogate him, so he let out a small chuckle, which she returned with a cheeky grin.

“Put your game face on, General,” Preston told her. “You okay to negotiate by yourselves?”

“Maybe after a coffee,” she muttered. Then she piped up. “McDonough’s a spineless dick anyway, I’m sure he’ll say yes.”

—

 

“No.”

The Elder and the General looked at each other in surprise, or perhaps confusion. They had spent a while working out the logistics of their base in Diamond City, but in the tenuous-at-best teamwork they had expended creating their plan, they hadn’t really considered that the mayor would refuse.

The General blurted out, “Why the fuck not?”

And Maxson groaned internally. He had already seen her in action during negotiations, but somehow, sitting  _ with _ her in allyship across from an entirely different opponent altogether was even worse. Since the age of fifteen, he had been sitting in at various meetings and diplomatic conferences and could confidently take on varying levels of aggression from varying levels of authorities, but the squat, rosy man sitting across from them didn’t look like he’d comply well with Nora’s preferred method of discussion.

At least it was entertaining to finally see her interact with someone she hated more than himself. 

As Maxson predicted, the man across the table flinched visibly, a deep frown appearing on his face. “It doesn’t seem necessary,” McDonough huffed, dabbing his upper lip with a handkerchief. “And I don’t want to cause any commotion in my city.”

“Mayor, we will ensure—” Maxson began, but the General cut him off quickly.

“There’s already a fucking commotion in your city,” she snapped, and a familiar angry flush rose to her cheeks. “People are on edge about the Institute. Ask any of your citizens. Or read the fucking papers. We’re trying to help you out, here.”

McDonough took a delicate sip of his tea. “Miss—”

“General.”

“General, there isn’t even proof that the Institute is as big of a threat as...” The mayor’s frown deepened, and a flash of annoyance crossed his rotund face. “That pesky journalist makes it out to be.”

She scraped her chair back immediately, hands on the table. “I’ll show you some fucking proof—”

Maxson stood suddenly, one hand reactively going for the small of her back. She whipped around instinctively, but before she could descend in a verbal tirade to him, Maxson was speaking over her. “I  _ think  _ what the General was about to say,” he said, shooting a pointed glare at her, “is that we have previously confirmed that the Institute’s primary operative was a resident in your city. The Broken Mask Incident has shown that the Institute is not only unpredictable, but an undeniably immense threat. We have the safety of your people at the forefront of our minds.”

He punctuated his words with another glance towards the General, who promptly straightened herself, idly blowing a strand of hair out of her face. She smoothed down the front of her coat and coughed lightly, then raised an eyebrow, waiting for the mayor’s reaction.

McDonough paused again to sip his tea. “The Broken Mask Incident was before my time,” he replied. “Since then, we’ve had  _ much _ less kerfuffle, and are much more selective about who we allow within the walls. And as for safety, Diamond City Security is the best in the area.”

He surely couldn’t be speaking of those idiots in outdated sports gear. 

Next to him, Nora sucked in a light breath and flexed her fingers underneath the table. “Mayor McDonough,” she said evenly, and something in her voice had changed. It was calm but sharp, and with just enough command that McDonough finally met her eyes, instead of boring holes into the bottom of his teacup. “As a citizen of this municipality for nearly a year, the horrors of the Broken Mask Incident resonate with a majority of the population even now. It was ultimately left unresolved, and combined with the continuous disappearances still happening during  _ your _ term, well, my concerns are not just as a fellow leader, but as a concerned constituent.”

Maxson blinked. That had been quite unexpected. 

Even the mayor seemed to consider her words for a moment, before glancing back down at his teacup. “Ah, I’ve run dry,” he announced. “Shall we take a break for refreshments? I’m peckish.”

Outside, the two leaders milled near the door to the mayor’s office, sipping on fresh cups of coffee provided by the mayor’s perky secretary, while the mayor himself had disappeared to find some snack cakes. The General took an unceremoniously loud sip, before making a face.

“Fuck Diamond City,” she muttered. “Coffee tastes like shit, people talk shit, and the whole fucking park still smells like a boys’ locker room.”

Maxson regarded his own cup. It had tasted fine to him, like any other cup of wasteland brew. 

The Elder and the General were on rather equitable terms now, having planned this excursion for nearly a week straight after her recovery. It was becoming increasingly apparent that their hold in the city center wasn’t as strong as either of them had liked, and it was getting tiresome ferrying random members from each side back and forth between the Castle and the Prydwen. They needed a base, no matter how small, to hold meetings and plan low-level maneuvers from a centralized location. However, the city center was, unfortunately, deeply infested with every type of degenerate the wasteland had to offer. They had debated on jointly securing a location—most would be easy enough to take over, but maintaining a position with so many hostiles in the area was simply unfeasible. 

So, the pair had agreed to find a local settlement. Goodneighbor was clearly out of question; even if Maxson wanted to concede that non-feral ghouls wouldn’t harbor the Brotherhood’s work, Goodneighbor wouldn’t take to well to what was essentially a military occupation. Diamond City, no matter how much the General seethed about it, had an unused backlot outside of the settlement’s marketplace, and both leaders acknowledged it would be good for both the Minutemen’s dilapidated reputation and the Brotherhood’s uneasy standing within the Commonwealth, respectively.

Somehow, impressive as they both were in stratagem and intellect, they had neglected to consider the fact that Diamond City, a fairly small pond, probably wouldn’t want the presence of two of the biggest fish the apocalypse had to offer.

The General took to pacing back and forth, and Maxson watched her for a moment over the rim of his coffee cup. 

“What was that back there?” He finally asked, stopping the General’s tense pace in her tracks.

She sighed haughtily. “Sorry. I  _ know _ you said not to yell or whatever when we were planning this. I couldn’t help it. He was being an idiot.” She resumed her pace without another glance.

Maxson smirked. Now that all her troublesome quirks were directed away from him, he actually found her quite amusing. “Oh, not  _ that _ . I expected that.” He took another sip. “The other thing.”

She frowned, giving him a passing look of confusion before the realization landed on her, and she let out a groan. 

“Oh. That.” She shook her head and huffed out her nostrils. “Asshole pissed me off so much he catapulted me back in time to campaigning for student body president.”

Maxson understood separately each of the words, but together they were borderline nonsensical. Rather than dwell on what she meant, or try to figure out what a student body president was, he simply nodded. 

“Anyway,” she grumbled. “How should we approach this?”

Gently, Maxson placed his empty cup back down on the counter. “Go back in, thank him for his time, then leave.”

The General blinked. “What, you’re giving up already?”

He shrugged. “I know a lost cause when I see one.”

She glared at his underhanded remark but made some non-committal grunt in agreement. They filed back in to the mayor’s office where Maxson launched into patter about understanding and acceptance and thank you for your time, Mayor McDonough, it was a pleasure to meet you. Even the General offered a blunt  _ yeah, thanks _ , despite mostly being enraptured in flicking a pen between her fingers before pushing back her chair and flinging the door open, nearly marching into a barrage of Diamond City guards rushing past before Maxson pulled her to a stop by the collar of her coat.

“What the fuck?” The General demanded immediately. The floor seemed to quake mildly under the heavy footsteps of the fleeing security. 

“Fight broke out at the Dugout,” one guard said in passing.

“Real messy,” another remarked. “Them soldiers sure know how to wreck a place.”

The General and Elder exchanged hurried accusatory looks—there were only two types of soldiers currently present in Diamond City, and they had both had been sent to the Dugout to wait for their respective leaders. 

“Which soldiers?” Maxson asked evenly. 

“All of ‘em,” the guard called in reply, already yards down the hall. 

“This is the exact kerfuffle I was trying to avoid!” McDonough cried out, pushing the leaders out into the chaos before slamming the door in their shocked faces. 

Just as the alliance had been working out  _ so _ well.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maxson and Nora take two steps back.

“But he said you almost blew up the Prydwen,” one of her soldiers was saying, pointing fingers at another equally bruised private in the crowd in front of her. “What’s a few punches compared to that? It’s not like we actually like them, right?”

Nora groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. Preston had neglected to tell her, when he had unceremoniously named her General of the, at the time, two-person army called the Minutemen, that half of her job would be babysitting fully grown adults who had never been through a proper education system.

“Well, do as I say, not as I do,” she replied, glaring at the soldier in question. “And what I’m saying is, don’t fight Brotherhood soldiers. At the very least, not in  _ public _ —”

“Okay, I think the General has made her point,” Preston cut in, waving everyone off with a gloved hand. “No fighting, everyone involved from the incident this morning has two hours of cleaning duty, and everyone’s dismissed back to their posts.”

The soldiers grumbled but dispersed amicably, a shapeless blue mass disappearing back into the city. She smiled gratefully at her lieutenant before her eyes passed over to the secondary group of orange-clad soldiers behind him, standing in a perfect square, also being lectured by their leader.

They finished up, and Nora hesitantly approached the shadowy bulk of the Elder as the soldiers saluted him in sync, and she tried not to roll her eyes.

“How was it?” She asked, shoving her hands into her pockets. Her own men had insisted through their rotten teeth that the Brotherhood had initiated the fight, and she was sure Maxson’s men had done the same. It was hard to tell from the broken bottles and destroyed furniture within the Dugout, and the brothers who owned the inn both had conflicting tales. What was confirmed, however, was that both soldiers were permanently banned from the bar, and McDonough huffing that they were lucky it wasn’t from the city as a whole.

“Lecturing my soldiers isn’t usually an indication of a day gone well,” the Elder replied as he turned to face her.

Agreed, Nora thought absentmindedly. The sunny morning had soured into a grey noon with the turn of events, and an even patter of rain was falling around them. The walk back to the Castle was going to miserable.

“My soldiers are going back to Cambridge,” Maxson was saying. “A radiation storm is coming in from the east. Your men should try to avoid it.”

“Brilliant,” Nora sighed. She would have to send them north, then, and the Elder sounded like he was done for the day. The Brotherhood reminded her of colony ants, at times; spend too much idle time out of base, and they began to frenzy. “When can we regroup?”

It wasn’t that she was extremely eager to jump back in to the diplomatic headache of a shared base, but the current day’s failures hung on her shoulders. She was already feeling restless from the mayor’s refusal. And Maxson’s prediction was steadily becoming true—thick clouds were rolling in, already faintly green. 

“You said you have a home in the city?” Maxson asked.

Nora blinked in surprise, then nodded. “Yeah. I did.”

—

Maxson didn’t know what to expect as the door to the General’s old apartment swung open, and he took a precarious step into the din as she stuffed her rusty, overstuffed keyring back into her coat pocket. It smelled of gunpowder and dust, and when she flicked on the lights, it bathed the surprisingly spacious room in a dull yellow light, illuminating a dubious pile of assault rifles and fragmentation grenades littered on the cracked floor.

“You live here?” He asked, sidestepping around safety hazard precariously. The clutter would never have passed inspection on the Prydwen, and he decided he wasn’t going to check the safeties on the litter of guns for his own sanity, instead looking up at the General with disturbed look. 

She shrugged. “I slept here a lot when I was trying to find Kellogg.” She looked around mindlessly, before pursing her lips. “I may have, uh, overplanned it a little.”

She nudged a loose grenade back into the pile, and the entire heap shifted to accommodate, a clatter of metal against concrete. 

Maxson backed himself away instinctively. Death by workplace safety violation seemed a terrible way to go. 

With a decent distance between him and the explosives, he took another look around as the electricity warmed up, glowing brighter. A fine layer of dust had settled around the room, and he assumed it had been quite some time since she had been back, if her comments about Diamond City indicated anything.

“I have a map of the city center,” the General muttered, wandering further into the room, near a rusty bed frame with two mouldy sleeping bags thrown on it. “Marked some potential locations we could clear out.”

He followed a few steps behind her and looked up at a hand-drawn, but extremely detailed outline of Boston central taped to the wall. The General’s hasty scrawl was instantly recognizable, and the map itself was perfectly scaled and, to his knowledge, pretty accurate. Small shreds of paper were taped over certain locations with extra notes— _ Greygarden: bring mutfruit. Trinity Tower: supermutants!!! _ , and Maxson couldn’t help but let out an appreciative whistle.

“This is impressive work,” he remarked.

“Thanks,” she replied. “I traced the map from my Pip-boy. I, um, prefer to work on paper, and...it gave me something to do, I guess.”

She gave him a hint of a smile as she tore the map down, unceremoniously shoving the contents of the desk below to one side as she lay the ratty paper down, before reaching into her pocket and pulling out a box of cigarettes and a book of matches. She struck the match and used it to light both the candle sitting on the corner of the desk and her cigarette, before holding the pack out to him. 

He refused after a moment of deliberation, deciding that it was all fine and good to be on normal speaking terms with the General, but he wasn’t quite ready to accept such casual offerings from such a hectic woman. Instead, he picked up a journal which had been pushed aside to make room as she began rummaging around the desk drawers for a pen, and flicked through it, revealing more notes, and he almost regretted opening it. It wasn’t that the contents were of a deeply personal matter, but they were a starkly humbling discovery about the woman before him. 

He considered putting it back, but a quick glance confirmed that the General’s back was still turned to him, and he discreetly continued to peruse. It was a collection of research, he assumed from the day she had left the vault, that she had gathered about what he knew for her was a brand-new world. The first entry was half a page long— _ Bottlecaps are currency now. Nuka-Cola only. Unsure of the exchange rate to dollars, but everything is priced weirdly anyway. Different priorities for a different economy? _ —and then some calculations. Another page was filled with foods and what appeared to be a complex ratings system, and yet another detailed the different animals she had encountered—some of which he hadn’t realized only came into existence after the war. Could a common person sustain themselves properly if roaches weren’t as large?

A small cough alerted him that he had gotten far too engrossed into the pages of the journal, and he looked up sheepishly, like a child caught with an adult magazine. The General was looking up at him with an equal amount of embarrassment, her cheeks and temples coloring pink. Ash fell, unprompted, from the drooping cigarette hanging out of her mouth before she took it out with two fingers and put it out on the ground. 

“That’s—that’s old,” she stammered. Then her eyebrows dipped downwards with a flash of anger. “And it was only for me—”

“I apologize,” Maxson said immediately, closing the journal promptly and dropping it back onto the desk. She glanced at it momentarily before looking up again, and he was struck at her sudden reserve. It had been foolish of him to pry and he was often bested by his own curiosity, which was now growing again at her silence.

Especially since, no matter the direness of the situation, she usually had something to say.

“When I first moved to the Capital, I did something similar,” he added. He considered divulging that alongside making a list of the slew of foreign monsters and abominations he encountered, he wrote fantastical stories about how he would defeat all of them, but decided against it. 

The General snorted. “Weren’t you like, five? That seems fine.”

“I was eight.”

“Ah. A fully grown man, by the Brotherhood’s standards,” she quipped. Before Maxson could properly affix a glare, she was reaching for the journal, tucking it away into a creaky drawer. “Just—don’t tell anyone about that, okay? Taking back the Castle sounds a lot less cool if my soldiers knew I didn’t know what a mirelurk was.”

She turned back to lean on one hand over the map, tracing a path with the other, and as Maxson observed her profile, he felt in his chest something like pity. If the contents of that leather-bound book weren’t the scribbles of a clearly insane woman, he would almost feel sorry for her. 

Moving across country had affected him deeply, and he couldn’t quite fathom what the adjustment period for moving across two centuries would be. 

“It’s not as bad as you think,” he told her. She passed him a sidelong glance. “There are some scribes who could learn from your attention to detail.”

“You should get them to try cryotherapy. I heard it stimulates the mind,” she replied dryly, before tapping the map. “Here.”

He peered over her shoulder at the sticky note.

“Hangman’s Alley,” he read aloud, squinting slightly. “You want to put our base in place called Hangman’s Alley.”

“There are only two points of entry,” she replied defensively, frowning. “And the buildings on either side are filled with rubble, so it’s basically fortified. Right now, there’s an unaffiliated group of raiders there, pretty small. Fifteen at most, last time I checked. It would be easy enough to take over.”

“Outdoors?”

The General huffed, annoyed. “We can build shelter.”

“So why didn’t you mention this location before?” Maxson asked. It was a little suspicious; she’d clearly known about it the entire time they had been planning, and he needed to know why she hadn’t bothered bringing it up. 

“Because I knew you were going to be this annoying about slumming it in the back alleys. And I was right,” she added with a pointed look. 

He finally conceded with a curt nod. 

“Fine. I’ll send a squad to clear it out tomorrow, then.”

“Perfect,” she replied, though her tone indicated she didn’t quite think so. She pointed out another spot on her map. “ _ Our _ men can meet here at sunrise.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Maxson informed her, and she crossed her arms over her chest when she turned to face him in full. “One squad can deal with fifteen raiders. Save your soldiers.”

Which was the truth, but he also didn’t want his men near any Minutemen troopers for a few weeks, especially after the display both sides had put on today. An embarrassment for him, and he’d hate to think of the headaches he’d receive from the Capital if word spread back there. 

“I think it was outlined in the terms of our alliance that all shared bases would be secured together, Elder,” the General said, and Maxson felt his shoulders tensing in response. She rarely dropped his title, and it was never out of respect when she did. “To prevent any confusion about tactical spaces.”

Outside her sheet metal home, thunder echoed faintly, as if indicating the rise in her temper. Maxson shifted on his feet, the bones in his body feeling itchy.

“I assure you, there is very little confusion surrounding our respective territories,” he replied, trying to keep his voice guarded and even. “At the very least, from the Brotherhood’s perspective.”

She exhaled sharply through her nostrils and a familiar red flush spread up her neck from behind her ears as she glared up at him. “Even so, it would be a benefit to have Minutemen presence while we secure the alley. We have more experience in these types of matters.”

He was sure she was referencing her countless settlements, which were impressive in number but not in strength or security. The Brotherhood didn’t exist to create homes for wastelanders, because they would turn out like the Minutemen: spread too thin, and too easily run down. He believed in the utility of a strong base, and vertibird access was far superior to the use foot soldiers and brahmin; that was how the Brotherhood had spread from coast to coast, for over two hundred years. 

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Maxson said simply. 

The General seethed, nails digging into her own biceps as she straightened her posture. “Why the fuck not?”

And she looked up at him while somehow inexplicably looking down, so confident in her stance and utterly disrespectful; they may have enjoyed a few weeks of flimsy cooperation but her journal and her constant aggression was just a reminder that she was ultimately just an unbelievably lucky woman who attributed her accomplishments to skill. She had been raised pre-War but the wasteland had enveloped her completely, and Maxson would not let himself be dragged down by her stubbornness. 

He was in this foul, littered Commonwealth for one reason, and one reason only. And it was not to bow down to the will of a fool playing General. 

So he snapped, “If your men can behave themselves, sure. But don’t let them get in our way.”

And their fragile peace shattered at their feet. 

“You know what, Maxson?” She spat, filling the space between them with two hefty strides. A pointed finger jabbed into his chest. 

He clenched his jaw. “What.”

“ _ I _ may be selfish or whatever it is you think of me and I’ve  _ very  _ recently come to terms with that but  _ you _ —” She prodded him again with each emphasized word, until he was backed up against the cracked wall and she was centimeters away from his face, and he glared at her down the length of his nose, feeling his own sudden anger rising to match hers. “— _ you _ are so  _ fucking _ arrogant, and conceited, and it’s so  _ fucking _ obvious you’ve never been told no your  _ entire  _ fucking life—”

“General,” he warned.

“—even though you’re  _ constantly _ wrong because you can’t even begin to conceive the idea that maybe your  _ perfect _ little soldiers are just as deranged and violent as you—”

“ _ General _ ,” he emphasized.

“—you megalomaniac son of a—” 

He snatched her wrist and pinned it to the desk and she scowled at him as he hissed, “Do you ever shut the fuck up?”

He quickly ducked to avoid a swipe from her other hand, which distracted him enough for her to wrench her wrist out of his grasp and push him backwards, the back of his legs hitting the sharp edge of the table and her voice was full of venom as she snarled, “What would you rather I do?”

And he looked down at her, out of breath and blood racing in his veins. No more words were forming in his mind so in his reply he hitched her closer by the forearm until they were breathing down each other’s necks and he could feel a delicate hand with sharp nails wrap around his neck.

The candle clattered to the floor, extinguishing itself on its own scattered wax and with it, the last of his resolve. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :^)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maxson and Nora negotiate different terms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, I'm glad I got this chapter out so quickly. I have a good idea of where I want this story to go from here, so...let's see lmao.

Nate used to narrate her anger with the observatory dialogue of a nature documentary: and there is our lawyer-to-be, about to get pissed off again because she’s watching the news. Watch, as her fists turn white and she tenses her shoulders. If found in the wild, do not interact with an aggravated Nora, because she  _ will _ bite. Simply observe, as her cheeks get red and her eyes narrow. 

But Nate always soothed her anger. Rations on fresh food are now even stricter due to increased war efforts, the television reporter would rattle off, and Nate would close his hand over hers and run a gentle thumb along her knuckles as she blurted out obscenities about using up resources to fight a resource war. And slowly, from where their skin touched, she would cool down. He likened her to a volcano and she told him he was a freshwater stream, trickling over smooth rocks.

He had chuckled at that. Compared to you? I’m a huge fucking glacier.

The Elder, on the other hand, only seemed to exist to get a rise out of her. As he wrapped a hand around her wrist and pried her fingers off his neck, she could feel her blood pulse harder and hotter from where he touched her, and when he wrenched her arm away and pulled her closer, he released a pin on the grenade she had been holding inside of her body and she pushed herself up against his bulk and snarled, blinded and strung out from the fury she felt in her veins.

“Fuck.  _ You, _ " she spat.

A rough arm wrapped around her waist and lifted her onto the balls of her feet. Maxson glared at her down the length of his nose, gritting his teeth and she couldn’t escape his grasp so she launched whatever wasn’t already lined up with his body at him and sank her teeth down into his bottom lip.

He barely flinched, pushing back against her attack, a probing tongue invading her mouth and running along her clenched teeth. It loosened him enough for her to yank her hands out of his and grasp frantically at his hair, and when they pulled back for air, he let out a deep breath.

“If we’re going to do this again, we should establish some parameters,” he said evenly, leaning back to observe her.

She jerked him forward again until their noses were touching, and scoffed. “Are you trying to negotiate with me right now?”

He didn’t reply, but he took an unexpected step forward and she backed away instinctively. With her hands at her sides, he forced her coat off her shoulders before closing the distance between them again and slamming her against a stack of ammo crates. As loose shotgun shells clattered to the floor, Nora fully clambered onto the set of his hips and he sent them both with ease to the next available surface, an unsteady workshop table and they both finally took a breath, hot puffs of air in each other’s faces.

“Once is just an event. Twice is repeat behavior,” he explained, one hand reaching up for the buttons of her shirt. A hard length was steadily growing against her thigh and she yanked him closer again, stopping just before their lips met. “And thus requires some guidelines.”

“Okay, fine,” she huffed. Maxson shrugged off his coat where it met her shirt on the ground and looked up expectantly. “One. No one can know about this.”

“Seems obvious,” he grunted, as she stalked him backwards, towards the bed this time. Thunder echoed outside, and a sudden chill swept through her exposed skin, raising goosebumps along her chest and arms. “Two. Neutral locations only.”

A brief flashback to the close call with Preston had her nodding, before shoving the Elder backwards, his knees hitting the rusted metal base of her haphazard bed and buckling. Steady work was made of undressing each other and the Elder hadn’t worn his ostentatious flight suit today, so she pulled his black t-shirt off with ease as he pushed her ragged jeans over her ass and over her ankles. 

“Third rule,” she breathed, and she stood before him in just her undergarments as he looked up at her from the bed, blue eyes darkened with lust and rage, “This is over when the alliance is over.”

He yanked her down by the forearm until she was eye-level and kneeling, drawing her in for another violent meeting of teeth and tongue. Her hands roamed the length of his torso and she could feel the scars and hair that formed there as heat pooled from her neck down to between her thighs. He finished the kiss with a snap of his teeth at her neck before a low voice growled in her ear.

“Sure, but why?”

“Because I won’t be under a contractual obligation not to fucking kill you,” Nora hissed, and Maxson laughed—a full blown maniacal bark that caused her to push him down roughly onto the rusty bed and climb onto his lap. 

His lust was apparent in his grey briefs and a hint of an arrogant smile remained as she peeled them off and tossed them aside but it disappeared when she returned and wrapped her delicate hands, sharp nails and all, around the base of his dick. Thick and curved, she lifted herself onto her knees for a moment before planting herself down and seating him in full, shoulders shuddering as the weeping head raked past the dry entrance and into the slick within. 

The first roll of her hips hit her hard and she let out a gasp, and Maxson’s strong hand came to rest at her thigh, steadying her as she picked up her pace. He muttered curses as his eyes slid closed, laying back full and uselessly trying to buck himself further into her, hitting her walls with ease. 

Slowly but surely, the anger clouding her eyes and darkening the edges of her vision subsided, pleasure taking over as she tilted her head back. A foolish move, she reckoned, exposing her neck but Maxson took no notice. She could already feel the bruises from his tightening grip on her thigh form as she rocked against him, but she was focusing on the increasing pressure between her legs where her clit was rubbing against his groin.

Just before her breaking point, she launched herself forward, landing her full weight with two hands on Maxson’s chest, and he heaved a hot breath of shock into her face. His eyes flicked open, narrow and disoriented and heavy, and his hands moved to squeeze her ass, digging in deep. In response, her fingers curled tightly into the hair on his chest and Maxson finally let out a choked  _ fuck _ . The sound of his voice sent her careening into her orgasm, and her nails were pushing into the flesh of his marred torso.

He pushed himself into a sitting position with one hand and lifted her off his lap, the other hand reaching in between them to jerk the remnants of himself onto his belly and she was left flailing for one moment before catching herself on his shoulders, panting desperately into his ear. 

When the tense of his shoulders had relaxed, she leaned back with a bit too much confidence and he caught her at the small of her back with a dampened paw, pushing his forehead against hers and for a few moments, they stayed there, breathing into each other’s mouths until the black on the edges of their visions had faded and the dull yellow din of Home Base came back in full. 

Nora opened her eyes and found that Maxson was looking at her, impassive and calm as ever. She released her grip from her shoulder and brought her hands up to his jaw, cupping his cheeks with a surprising tenderness. Whatever fire that had been fueling her body was extinguished, and she felt the chill of the room settle into her exposed skin.

She swallowed her thoughts and examined the Elder’s face. As ruined as the rest of him, she thought, running a thumb over a particularly nasty gash running from his right eyelid and into his neck. His eyes closed again, and on an impulse, she dug a nail into the deepest part of the scar.

“ _ Fuck _ , woman,” he hissed, yanking himself away. The back of his hand flew up to rub where she had invaded, and she pulled herself off him with a grin. Surely, that would show him to stay vigilant. 

“What’s that from?” She asked, picking up the scattered clothes from around the room. 

“Deathclaw,” he muttered, snatching the briefs from her offering hand. The arrogant tone had returned to his voice in full, though their moment had left an uneasiness in her stomach.

“Huh,” she mused. He glared at her from the bed as thunder echoed, the loudest it had ever been, shaking the walls of the house threateningly. She turned away momentarily to pull on her pants, turning back around to find the Elder had already dressed, with military efficiency and perfection. Army boys were always the same, through every century she would live through, it seemed. 

She picked up her crumpled coat and patted down the pockets, finding a pack of cigarettes within. A soothing carcinogen took priority over finding her shirt at that moment, and she lit it with a content sigh, before offering one out to the sullen Elder.

He regarded her for a moment before accepting.

They did clash in every other way, she supposed, but they both agreed on something fundamental about leadership. 

It’s lonely at the top.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maxson and Nora's subordinates are slightly concerned.

When Nora returned to the Castle that night, Preston was eagerly awaiting her at the entrance.

“How was your rendezvous with the Elder?”

She flinched at his specific choice of words. “What?” She asked suspiciously, before blinking and relaxing. “Oh, right. We found a place for a secure base. I need a unit to meet the Brotherhood soldiers at the back bay at sunrise.”

The Elder and the General had reached some semblance of agreement after their sordid affair as they had waited out the rest of the radstorm, and Nora had promised not to send any of the soldiers that had been involved in the fight as long as Maxson promised the same. Sure, her men were stuck with lookout duty, but at least she had somewhat gotten her way. Her backup plan had been to simply send soldiers to Hangman’s Alley regardless, with forgiveness being easier to obtain than permission, but the Elder had seemed reluctantly determined to rebuild their alliance.

Her lieutenant nodded dutifully, before adding, “And there’s more good news, General. Brotherhood scribes have your tracker from Virgil working.” He dropped an envelope in her hands, slender and sleek, with a small bulk protruding out from one corner. And then the concern took over, and Nora sighed, waiting for the inevitable lecture. “I  _ really _ think you should take someone this time, General.”

“Preston,” Nora began, ready to descend into a prompt refusal and making the point that she didn’t have anyone, but he interrupted her. 

“Last time was too close of a call,” Preston reminded, and her heart sank in her chest at her closest friend’s unwavering tone. While Nora’s skill lay in razing down any obstacle that lay in her way, Preston had an uncanny talent for extreme pathos. She called it guilt tripping, he called it  _ I’m worried about you _ , and so far, they were one for one with each discussion they held on the topic. “Coursers are serious business, Nora. I’ve seen them wipe out entire settlements in less than an hour. Armed settlements with dozens of people.”

His breath hitched and she recalled their brief visit to the old university. It was rare to find any place in the Commonwealth that was completely uninhabited, but even the wasteland’s most fearsome monsters didn’t want to dwell in the carnage that synth had left. She nodded in solemn agreement. Every fight she entered could come down to the luck of the draw, and it would be a waste to get so far and lose over something nearly preventable.

“Everyone I know is either too useless,” Nora sighed, “Or too use _ ful  _ to bring on a death mission.” She tried to look imploringly at her deputy, who had offered his assistance several times before finally giving up. Maybe giving Preston a taste of his own medicine. 

“What about that sniper you hired? He seemed useful,” Preston suggested, unaffected by her pathetic attempt at persuasion.

“Talked too much,” Nora grumbled.

“Or Nick Valentine?” Preston continued. “He’s good in these types of situations, and not a bad shot either.”

“Me and Nick are...not speaking,” Nora replied, through gritted teeth. She hadn’t spoken to the private eye since her journey to the Memory Den. The connection between his wires and Kellogg’s brain were too tenuous, and she had  _ maybe _ threatened to  _ kill your mercenary ass twice if you try to come near me again you murderous son of a bitch _ , much to the detective’s confusion. She had purposely avoided the neon lights that lead to his agency, still uneasy about their last interaction, and perhaps embarrassed.

Preston gave her a questioning look, before deciding not to press the matter, instead resigning himself with a sigh. “There must be someone you can take,” he said. “There are less people than in your time, I know. But there are still people.”

Suddenly, Nora was overcome with a bout of exhaustion, shoulders sagging in her General’s coat as Preston watched her with earnest. It had been a long, confusing day, and despite the setting sun barely disappearing beneath the ocean, she felt ready to collapse in her bed. The more things she accomplished, the farther away Shaun seemed from her grasp, and it wore her down unexpectedly as she stood at the stone doorway to her reclaimed fortress. 

She didn’t want to dwell on her next mission, simply because each step she had taken so far seemed to only lengthen her journey by an extra mile, and the end was far past any foreseeable horizon in her eye line. 

“I...can’t think about this right now, Preston,” she mumbled, pushing by her lieutenant. He caught her by her turning shoulder, eyebrows knitting together with concern. 

“Are you okay?” He asked.

“I’m just tired,” she smiled weakly. 

Preston nodded solemnly, and she was overwhelmed with appreciation at her friend’s neverending empathy. For the wasteland and its people, but also for her; besides Codsworth, only he knew how she had been before she had so comfortably taken up the role of General. He proclaimed over and over about Nora had saved him, but Preston had likewise pulled her from depths she didn’t know she could reach, and his endless faith in her abilities were a good portion of her motivation. 

She couldn’t let him down, and it made her almost regret allowing him into her life. Some days, it seemed easier just to lie down and let a radstorm wash everything away.

“Take all the time you need,” he told her reassuringly. They began walking together towards the Castle’s interior, and Nora happily slung an arm around the lieutenant. The radio tower blared out patriotic tunes and she whistled along mindlessly. Preston remained quiet, lost in his own thoughts, until they reached the door to her room. “Have a good night, General.”

“Night, Preston,” she replied, grinning as she stepped into her quarters. Dusty and dull, but the closest thing she had found to a home. 

Preston looked up thoughtfully before she closed the door. “What about Paladin Danse?” He suggested, returning to their previous conversation. “He knows his stuff, and a proposal like that could really reflect well on our alliance. Especially after today’s events.”

He heaved a sigh of faint disapproval at their soldier’s actions.

Nora paused. She wasn’t going to argue that the alliance was going  _ just fine _ , actually—

“Maybe,” she mused.

—but he  _ had _ given her an idea. 

—

A week later, Maxson hastily flipped over the pile of blueprints he had been staring at with his proctors as an initiate opened the door to the airport garage, ceremoniously announcing the presence of the General of the Minutemen.

“Get her out of here,” he barked immediately, as the General sidled up to the table with a sickeningly sweet grin on her face. He glowered at her to no avail, and Proctor Ingram bristled next to him. The Institute was getting closer every day, and it was difficult to find times between everyone’s increasingly hectic schedules to review their plan of attack. The General’s appearance was both a reminder of the urgency of their ultimate mission, and her unfortunate knack for showing up at incredibly inconvenient times. 

“She said it was urgent,” the initiate squeaked, and Maxson groaned before dismissing the soldier with a wave of his hand.

“What do you want?” He snapped, as Nora peered down at the table. He pulled the papers out from under her gaze and rolled them up, handing them off to an unimpressed Quinlan, who scurried out of the garage with the blueprints before returning his attention to her. “This is confidential Brotherhood information. Avert your eyes, General.”

She tilted her head at him, before taking a cursory glance around the room, her intrusive gaze landing on a hunk of metal sitting in one corner. “Holy shit. Is that Liberty Prime?” 

“Jesus Christ,” Ingram muttered, rubbing her temples. “I’m going for lunch.”

“I’m with ya,” Teagan sighed. They filed out of the room, and Maxson was itching to do the same, but unfortunately for his appetite, the General had taken to nudging Liberty Prime’s helmet with one ratty boot. 

He forced himself in between her and the disassembled robot, obscuring her view. 

“May I help you, General?” He inquired, louder this time. He almost didn’t know if he wanted to go through the usual feigned politeness script they usually stumbled through; the sooner she got what she came for, the sooner he could refocus his hastily stolen attention to the proper work at hand. 

“Yes,” she grinned, and Maxson let out a sigh through his nostrils as she played along, the stretch of her lips over her straightened teeth almost cartoonish. It was impressive how she could act so casual, and Maxson willed himself to do the same as she chirped, “Is America’s biggest conspiracy really sitting in the Brotherhood garage, two hundred years in the future?”

He was also still unsure if the General’s predilection for speaking nonsensical words was a purposeful power move on her part, or if she really couldn’t help herself. Nonetheless, he narrowed his eyes. 

“What are you talking about?”

Nora sighed, as if  _ he _ was the one being difficult. “It was all over the news. Some journalist snuck into the Pentagon and took a picture of  _ that _ , claiming it was some super secret expensive military weapon. Then he went on TV and exposed it, asking how they could afford to build something like that when our economy was going to hell, but the government kept claiming it was a doctored photo and—nevermind.” She stopped suddenly when she saw the clear disinterest on the Elder’s face, suddenly looking sullen. “You might as well have the set pieces they used to fake the moon landing in here. It’s no big deal.”

She turned away to stride along the length of the room, observing each square inch with too much precision for Maxson’s liking. But he wasn’t going to waste energy on trying to force her to stop, knowing she wouldn’t comply to his requests anyway, so he waited impatiently until she had rounded the garage and returned within a speaking vicinity.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” She asked casually, examining her fingernails.

“You’re looking at it.”

She raised her eyebrows, looking unimpressed. “Great. Wanna catch a courser with me?”

“Absolutely not,” Maxson replied.

“Why?”

He set a stony expression, jaw clenching as he stated, “I’m busy.”

It was confounding not just why she insisted he explain himself to her, but why he always did. his explanations never seemed to abate her; in fact, all they ever seemed to do was make him feel foolish for expending the mental energy, and wonder how she always managed to slip through the cracks of his well-crafted barriers. 

She pursed her lips as she looked around. “Seems like it.”

“Take Paladin Danse,” he said, raising a gloved hand to point at the paladin in question, who had been peacefully eating his own lunch at the workshop table, trying his best to ignore the two bickering leaders. He looked up in shock at the mention of his name, quickly trying to swallow his food to reply.

The General passed a sidelong glance over the paladin, before turning back to Maxson with a shrug. “No, that’s okay.”

“Then leave.”

She huffed out the side of her mouth, blowing a clump of hair that had fallen from her ponytail out of her eyes. “I’m heading out tomorrow,” she stated. “And Preston  _ really _ doesn’t want me to go alone this time.”

Despite her emphasis on her lieutenant’s name, it was clear she wasn’t too enthusiastic about the idea of facing a courser alone, either. Perhaps her incident at the Glowing Sea had finally humbled her. He should have congratulated her on passing the first grade.

But instead, Maxson clicked his tongue. “I agree. Coursers are extremely dangerous. ” She perked up at his response, and he quickly dove in for the kill: “Take a squad.”

She crumpled only slightly at his words, before crossing her arms across her chest indignantly and frowning upwards at him. “It’ll be fun,” she insisted, though he couldn’t think of anything less fun than trying to coordinate a combat mission against a level three hostile with the General of the Minutemen. “And it’ll be a great display for our soldiers.”

He gritted his teeth. Their respective men hadn’t had another full-blown fistfight while they cleared Hangman’s Alley, but that appeared to be the luck of the pick-up vertibirds’ timing, and not any actual attempt at camaraderie. There had been one report of friendly fire, which the General had insisted through written word was a mistake, and he didn’t have much of a choice but to begrudgingly let it go. The Minutemen were now steadily fixing up the secured base, and unlike the General, he hadn’t insisted his own men be present.

His temples began to throb.

“A great display for our soldiers will be defeating the Institute,” he replied. “We have several available combat teams at your disposal.”

He might’ve suggested she take her own men, but then he would feel responsible if they all got themselves killed, because apparently any foray into formal tactics was too much organization for the average wasteland trooper.

“I think some fresh air would be great for you,” she continued, completely unaffected. “You look tense. Maybe it’ll fix your posture.”

He straightened his back at her words, the realization that he had both been hunched into the collar of his coat and walked straight into her trap dawning on him at the same time. The General flicked him an easy smile and waited for his reply. 

“No,” he said firmly.

He strode away from her, returning to the workshop table and trying not to sigh as her footsteps trotted after him. 

“When was the last time you were out on the field?” She asked.

Maxson stuffed his fists in his pockets so the General wouldn’t see them clench as he steeled himself toward her. Her smile was gone, and she was looking up at him with a serious expression, dark eyes impassive as they observed him. He kept his back as straight as he could, towering over her, but she maintained her stance, leaning casually against the table edge. The silence grew around them, heavy and thick, but neither dared move.

Then, behind them, Paladin Danse cleared this throat.

The two leaders turned to face him, attention snapping towards the seated paladin with practiced alertness.

“We can cover your work, Elder Maxson,” he said delicately.

The Elder’s eyes snapped closed with a particularly intense jab at his temples as the General turned back to him, beaming. 

“I’ll schedule a ‘bird for tomorrow, then,” she announced satisfactorily. With a flick of her coattails and a swish of her ponytail and she was gone, and Maxson dragged a hand over his face, opening his eyes to stare down at Danse.

The paladin pursed his lips with concern. “Were you not inclined to join the General?”

Maxson rubbed his forehead. “It’s fine.”

“It’ll be good being back on the field,” the paladin remarked thoughtfully. “It  _ has  _ been a while.”

Although Maxson wasn’t usually inclined to tell soldiers of Danse’s tenure to shut up, he couldn’t think of anything else to say to the man, so he simply remained silent, looking at the floor and trying to will his persistent headache to cure itself.

“And you  _ do _ look tense,” Danse added, before returning to his meal, slurping an entire glass of mutfruit glass in one sip. 

Damn the Commonwealth, Maxson thought through gritted teeth. If he didn’t get out of this scorched wasteland before his sanity broke, he would inevitably die here, if not at the hands of the Institute, then by the General of a faction who hadn’t even been a blip on his radar when they first arrived. 

Damn this whole fucking city. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so excited for the next chapter you would not even believe. Thanks for reading!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maxson and Nora catch a courser.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Besides the first chapter, I think this is my favorite chapter so far. I also wanna add my own bit about that ~tumblr fiasco~ and say that writing Maxson's pov about synths was kinda rough but I hope I portrayed the nuances in his ideals sufficiently, and in the next few chapters as well as the main questline picks up. Like, this whole fic stemmed from Maxson being dickhead and seeing if there was a viable way for him to be less of a dickhead soooo...I'm always up for discussing in depth his motivations and why he's my favorite faction leader (besides Preston!!!!) so just drop a comment or follow me on tumblr and I'll scream at you for hours about it :)
> 
> Also. I'm about to enter exams. I have the next few chapters for this written up but all my other stories will be on hold until this one is done and dusted.

“There’s coffee on the counter,” Nate’s voice informed her as she shuffled, heavy-footed and pregnant, out of their bedroom and into the kitchen. He had been a morning person before joining the military, but an added benefit to his conscription was that her fiance—husband, actually—would now wake up early _and_ cook and clean. Nora noted that he had taken to emptying the last of the moving boxes, which were now stacked neatly in one corner.

She murmured her gratuity as she poured herself a cup, remarking, “It’s burnt.”

“But made with love,” he replied immediately, and she grinned as she pulled her hair back and lumbered towards the bathroom to brush her teeth. When she stepped back out, pulling her bathrobe tighter across her swollen abdomen, Codsworth flew by in a fit of metallic hysterics about breakfast.

She frowned, one hand going to her belly, which was inexplicably flat.

“Fraternal Post called,” Nate said, eyes glued to the television as he cradled Shaun, wrinkled and tiny and beautiful, in one arm. “They want me to do a speech next month.”

Nora blinked. Right. She wasn’t pregnant anymore. Nate had assembled the Mister Handy after she was released from hospital. “Again?”

“Yeah, this town doesn’t seem to have much going for it,” Nate yawned, idly flicking through the channels. “Until you become president, that is. Then _you_ can make a bunch of speeches, and _I_ get to sit lookin’ pretty in the front row.”

She chuckled, opening the fridge. “Did we forget to get milk?”

“You gotta mix it from the powder, sweetie,” Nate laughed, and Nora shook her head at herself again. She had never been a morning person, she supposed, but she seemed to be particularly bad today. Her mother insisted that her sleep habits would change to accomodate the baby, but two weeks in, and she was still struggling to keep to Shaun’s feeding schedule.

Codsworth flew by again, somehow from the same direction as before, wringing his robotic arms together. “Shaun has been changed, but he absolutely refuses to calm down. I think he requires some of that _maternal affection_ you seem to be so good at.”

“Shaun is with Nate,” Nora said numbly, looking back at the couch where her husband and child had been sitting, to find they were both gone. She stared, confused, at the empty space they had been occupying, before Nate exited the bathroom and abated her quickly settling panic, his hair brushed back and wearing a bright white t-shirt and his best slacks. Tears welled in her eyes at the sight of her husband, and she found her hands grasping at the angle of his jaw as he looked down at her, concerned.

“Are you alright?”

“Huh?” Nora shook the darkening thoughts from her head, blinking away her tears. “Yeah. Sorry. I don’t think I got much sleep last night...”

“Baby brain,” Nate said knowingly, planting a kiss on her forehead. “You heard Codsworth. Go on.”

She wandered to the nursery, where Shaun was indeed crying, his tiny face brightening as she leaned over his crib and picked him up, pressing him into her shoulder. A moment later, the door to the nursery slid open, and Nate was at her back, cooing over their son.

“After my speech, we should go for a walk,” he murmured, and she leaned into him fully, feeling his arms slide up her waist to support the weight of his family. “In that park...”

He flinched as Nora suddenly jumped away from him, a droplet of blood slipping from the wound on his forehead and nearly catching her in the eye. “Your head.”

A hand flew up to his hairline, clean and unmarred and perfect, but before he could remark, Codsworth’s voice traveled down the hall once again. “Sir, Mum? You should come and see this!”

Nate barely had time to react as Nora pushed Shaun into his arms and raced out the room, her heart sinking at the sudden familiarity of the scene. In the living room, the television blared its announcement for breaking news and a somber reporter came on screen.

_...yes, reports of..._

Nora could almost mouth along to his words before she heard Nate’s footsteps reaching their front door and throwing it open. An immense heat flooded the lounge, and she drifted her gaze outdoors, where a thick cloud of burnt orange was settling over the blue skies. She reached out a trembling hand for his shoulder, barely noticing the sharpness in his darkened hair and the outline of a beard replacing his clean jaw and light brown locks. The floorboards trembled beneath their feet.

“Honey,” she breathed, and he turned and he wasn’t Nate at all. Acrid air began filling her lungs as she crumpled to the ground, eyes watering and mouth steadily filling with dust. All she could do was look on as Maxson kept his gaze towards the chaos and in his hands wasn’t her baby anymore but a slick, black detonator with a large red button. A single thick finger hovered over it as the Elder turned his profile to her.

“Don’t,” she begged. Those stern blue eyes passed over her with no regard as he clicked down, and a mushroom cloud bloomed from the earth behind him, before everything she knew had fallen apart around her, and they were standing alone in a charred wasteland.

She awakened with a gasp and Preston pushing a hot coffee in her hands, informing her quietly that her vertibird was here, and the Elder was waiting.

—

Maxson observed the General with interest as they flew over the Commonwealth. Her greeting had lacked her usual vigor, a mere nod of her head accompanied by a tense grip on her coffee. She boarded the vertibird in silence, laser focus on the expanding view below them, one knee bouncing erratically against the shotgun leaning against her seat.

His own hand was on one armored leg as he watched her; for once, she was a bundle of nervous tension and he almost relished in the fact. A gatling laser was cradled in his lap and he could feel his blood pulsing in his veins as the other hand traced gently over the metal bars. It wasn’t anxiety but a long-sought tranquility, soothing a buried itch he had ignored nearly into oblivion after months on Prydwen, staring blindly at paperwork until the written words bled together into a persistent headache and clenched jaw. But that was all absent now, and even before they touched the ground Maxson could feel an exhilaration that only the field could bring him.

When they landed, the General spoke curtly, “Virgil said we can follow any signal from here.”

As she fiddled with her Pip-boy, Maxson looked around the deadened university plaza. There was little sign of life of the wasteland or the creeping threat lurking in the shadows that both the leaders were chasing after, and the thought that neither were visibly present loomed ominously over him. There was no physical entrance to the Institute, the General had informed him, but being so close to a known point of access lent a stale taste to the empty air.

An erratic beep shook the Elder from his thoughts, and next to him, Nora tapped the screen on her wrist satisfactorily. She wandered off with no indication of her direction and Maxson idly followed her, weaving through empty buildings and cracked concrete as her Pip-boy showed them the way, emitting steadier, louder sounds.

They found themselves outside a towering green skyscraper, and the General met his eyes for the first time during the entire endeavor. Her hands were stuffed deep into her pockets but her voice was even as she stated, numbly, “So.”

“Do you have a plan, General?” He asked, one hand resting on the handle.

She pursed her lips, then shrugged.

“Shoot everything that moves. Loot everything that doesn’t.”

Maxson chuckled. She was an equally valuable source of entertainment as she was of stress, and as she slipped her shotgun from its holster and leaned it against her shoulder, he twisted the handle, heart beating roughly with anticipation.

“Locked,” he stated stiffly. He made a move for his sidepiece, tucked away in the inner pockets of his coat, before the General put up a quizzical hand.

“Christ, were you going to shoot the thing off?” She muttered, kneeling before the door and pulling a pin from her hair. Maxson shrugged, watching the General fidget with the lock until an audible click was heard. When she straightened back up, there was a usual spark in her eyes. “You ever read any comic books?”

Before flinging the door open and negating his chance at reply, revealing a dark, empty lobby.

They stepped inside precariously, sweat bleeding through Maxson’s gloves and loosening his grip on his laser. It was eerily quiet, as the whole mission had been so far, and the absence of chaos further intensified the blood pumping through his body.

The General lead the way into the main hall, before she whipped back and pressed herself against the doorway, gesturing for Maxson to do the same. “Two bodies,” she informed him. “Gunners.”

Three gunshots and a gory yell from the main hall punctuated her statement, and she sagged slightly against the wall, shaking her head.

“Why is it always fucking Gunners?” She muttered to herself, picking out two shotgun shells from the makeshift bandolier hanging around her shoulders and flicking her weapon open.

He could ask himself the same thing. As if the Commonwealth wasn’t already strife with abominations and thrill-seeking raiders, it had been difficult for him to believe of the existence of a militarized force of evil. Uniting people under one command, one ideology had been a feat in itself after the war; for the Gunners to exist, as self-serving yet _organized_ as they were was nearly unfathomable.

But he had seen the work they could make of highly trained squads and roaming vertibirds, so he shifted Final Judgment in his hands and set his jaw in preparation.

“Count of three?” The General confirmed, holding up three fingers. She counted down, before Maxson stopped her.

“Wait,” he said, and she paused, eyebrows knitting together. “Why did you ask about comic books?”

She rolled her eyes and clenched her fist before careening herself through the door, shotgun set firmly against her shoulder. Maxson followed energetically, squinting through the dust at the shambles of the main hall.

It wasn’t brighter in the lobby interior, but the more gunshots echoed throughout, revealing their source from a higher level. Still, no movement was to be seen except for the General scampering from the first corpse to the next, patting down the bodies’ pockets with the disaffection of someone who had done this many times before. He tried to hide his look of disgust as she brazenly flipped the cadaver over, entrails falling out of the mercenary’s abdomen as it hit the floor. The blood that pooled beneath it was still steaming and bright red.

Fresh.

Then, an announcement blared through the surprisingly functional PA system, a grisled, throaty voice: _Courser is on the second floor. Kill on sight. Send reinforcements to the lobby in case there are more._

Maxson locked eyes with the General, who stuffed the stimpacks she had found into her empty knapsack, before surveying the room. She crept towards a covered stairwell, where Maxson joined her.

“I asked,” she said, surprisingly pleasant given the manhandling of death she had just performed, “Because Captain Cosmos used to be my favorite.”

“And?”

They moved silently up the stairs before the General spoke again, turning towards him with what appeared to be a look of glee.

“ _And_ , we’re totally Captain Cosmos and Stella Skyfire right now,” she whispered excitedly. She gave a pointed look towards his gatling. “You even have a little laser gun just like Stella.”

Maxson sighed, peering out into the hallway of the second floor. Two steps of footsteps were heading steadily towards them, and he could hear the whir of a turret straight ahead. He gesticulated towards the General, who nodded before rushing through the entrance. The turret activated with a mechanical beep, and he managed to grasp his fellow leader by the wrist and hitch her backwards, just avoiding a spray of bullets where she had previously been standing. She collapsed into him gracelessly but pulled away as the footsteps turned into a thunderous gallop, and two Gunners appeared, sweating and wounded, but caught by surprise at the sight of the two leaders.

With ease, the General butted the first with the handle of her shotgun, sending him tumbling down the stairs where he landed with a fatal crack. The second charged at Maxson with a laser pistol, nearly checking his shoulder with a blast as his gatling warmed up before she too was crumpled in a heap with the other, an even circle of laser burns sinking into the skin of her chest.

Meanwhile, the General had made quick work of the turret with two shotgun shells and it fizzed out as the pair approached the ruined hunk of metal.

“You didn’t heed my warning,” he scolded her, kicking it aside as they reached another doorway. This one branched out into a series of open pathways, and he could already see the shadows of more Gunners maneuvering within the rooms on the opposite end. Then he added, “And I am _not_ Stella.”

She frowned. “Was that what all this was?” She asked, doing some mockery of his hand signals. An easy grin returned to her face when she saw his disgruntled expression.

Laser blasts came through their entrance, and they both pressed their backs to the walls once again as the General reloaded her gun.

“Well, you wouldn’t be Jangles,” she mused, before peering around the doorway and releasing one shot, which landed spectacularly on an approaching Gunner private. She crouched down and grabbed the fresh corpse by the forearm into their hallway, reaching into its pockets and pulling out a crinkled pack of bubblegum, sighing but pocketing it anyway.

“I am clearly Captain Cosmos in this arrangement,” Maxson huffed, sidestepping the body into the open pathways. The ridiculousness of the argument, combined with his first official field kill in a few verifiable months had left blood pounding in his ears, and he was not keen to dwell behind broken walls for much longer. The General joined him in haste, cramming two pieces of expired gum into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully.

“I’m definitely Cosmos,” she argued, before shooting another rapidly approaching Gunner in the face. “He goes to different planets and helps the locals out. I literally do that.”

“I—” Maxson paused his rebuttal to jam the barrel of Final Judgment into another Gunner that the General had missed, now crouching on the gun and reloading yet again, “—am the captain of an actual ship, so—”

“Okay, well, you’d consider half of the alien species in the comics abominations—” the General began, before they were both cut off again by the loudspeaker.

_The courser is now on the third floor. Reports of a second intruder on the east wing._

The two leaders looked at each other for a moment, before their attention was swept up to a visible window overlooking their position. Two types of laser blasts were being fired, alongside traditional ballistics, and this time, there was something Maxson had never encountered before: light blue streaks barrelling with alarming accuracy, as three, then four, then six Gunners were killed in the view of the window.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he squinted upwards, making out a faint shimmering silhouette crossing the room.

Beside him, the General was already racing towards the next set of stairs. The third floor was heavy with Gunners, combat boots thundering against the ruined floors, and room by room the General cleared out the hostiles while Maxson’s gatling quickly took out the remaining turrets and rushing combatants. Most, he noted, were barely looking in his direction, enabling him to catch them by surprise in the back, confusion apparent in their dead faces. Then the floor was cleared, and they headed up the next flight.

The pair almost seemed to work in harmony as they swept through Greenetech Genetics. It caught both the leaders by surprise, but they fell into their own respective paces with ease. The General was swift and surprisingly accurate, and the Elder—well, he had a huge fuck-off gatling laser, so the need for the aforementioned skills were most unnecessary, but still present. The Gunners, he was pleased to learn, were far too under-qualified to be handling the impressive gear they were wielding, and it would have reminded him of another leading group of the Commonwealth had their leader not blasted the interior of the building to rubble with her explosive shotgun shells. It was impressive, the carnage the General managed to leave, not just with her weapon but also while cramming all the ammo and chems she could find into her steadily filling knapsack, even as the building turned into a whirlwind of chaos and violence around her. When the hallway was clear, he watched from the doorway as she eradicated three desperate Gunners with ease before deftly kicking open a crate of grenades, dumping the entire stash into her never-ending bag.

It was an adrenaline rush and a chem high that could only be achieved through such skillful, clean mission accomplishments, and Maxson revelled in the red glow each time his gun warmed in his fingers. The General seemed to feel the same, closing one eye as she lined up her shots, the only sounds present the respective flapping of their coattails as they rounded corners and stormed office rooms.

He _also_ noticed her stuffing a bottle of vodka into the depths of her bag, though he didn’t comment, and before they knew it, they were both crouching behind another doorway on the fourth floor, watching blue and red streaks fly by in the room across the hall. The blood in Maxson’s body was verifiably rushing now; he could feel it in his ears and his neck, despite barely breaking a sweat. There was a tear on the sleeve of his coat from a wayward bullet, revealing the slender sheets of protective steel Teagan had sewn within his coat, and across from him, the General was sagging against the wall, breathing in deeply as she tenderly prodded her jaw, where a Gunner had managed to land a fist before Maxson had mown him down.

“You know what,” Nora deliberated, looking at Maxson with bright, energetic eyes, “You’re right. We’re both leaders. Maybe we’re more like the Unstoppables.”

Maxson thought about it, every neuron in his brain firing off with adrenaline, then nodded, releasing an exhale he didn’t realize he had been holding in. “Alright. You’d be the Mistress of Mystery—”

“—and you’d be Grognak the Barbarian!” Nora exclaimed. Maxson stared at her. “I mean, for obvious reasons.”

She jerked her gun open again, replacing the empty shells with two more from her steadily dwindling supply. He watched in mild amusement as she strapped a looted combat knife to her thigh, then pulled her dark hair back into a tight ponytail.

“Says the one holding an explosive shotgun—where do you even get a weapon like that?”

She pursed her lips thoughtfully, then shrugged. “I found it.”

He shook his head, because _of course_ , before rising to his feet and offering a gloved hand to the wilting General. She hopped up with a sturdy amount of agility, stretching her neck until a satisfying _click_ popped, and flicked her shotgun closed, smiling up at him.

“Can’t be that many floors left,” he stated.

“Looks like that courser did most of the easy work for us,” she replied, as they crossed the bridge into the most recent carnage. With her knapsack positively bulging, she ignored most of the corpses, and another announcement echoed through the room. The omniscient voice was strained now; Maxson could almost see the urgent lips pressed against the microphone as whoever was behind it commanded _Fall back, fall back to original positions. The courser is nearing the elevator!_

The rest of the building seemed dead; most Gunners they encountered afterwards were dead, bodies slung over desks and railings with no regard, and Maxson found himself speeding through each remaining floor, climbing over fallen ceilings and weaving through hallways at an erratic pace. The General kept up with him, bubblegum snapping between her lips but tension held in her neck as she craned behind them to ensure they were clear on both sides.

Up one flight of stairs, then another, then another. Unease grew in Maxson’s bones as room after room, they only seemed to encounter mangled corpses and tattered pre-War junk. When they reached what could only be the last accessible floor—no more stairwells or collapsed ceilings to maneuver through—he paused once more.

 _The courser is after the girl_.

The General shot him a warning look, and he understood her unspoken words immediately that they weren’t going to discuss the matter now, though the implication still hung in the air. Coursers were sent to the surface for one reason, research had told him, and he wondered if the cohesion with which he and the General had worked through for the past two-odd hours was about to collapse.

He had learned a lot about the General that day, and it was that if she was on your side, it was easy to pretend that her foolishly optimistic fundamentals about this world— _his_ world, and not hers—weren’t highly misplaced.

Otherwise—

“Elevator,” Nora murmured.

—well, he supposed. They would climb and die on that hill when they reached it.

It seemed adequate that after the miniature war they had just fought together on the floors coming up, they would only be soaring down as they reached their goal.

They didn’t look at each other as the elevator drove them downwards. The General leaned against the railing, closing her eyes, while Maxson stared at the tattered floor. It wasn’t exhaustion that overtook them, just a peaceful preparation as the ticker on the wall indicated they were being dragged into the depths below.

He could feel a slight sting where another bullet had whizzed by his ear, catching the shaved hair that grew behind it and creating a shallow laceration that dried as soon as it bled. Across from him, the General had a bruise forming where she’d been hit, cradling one arm that had been caught in a turret’s crossfire. It had resulted only in a tear in her sleeve, but the proximity alone would probably leave a mark for a few days.

He had little desire to compare injuries, counting it so far successful based on the fact that both their hearts were still beating alone. There had been a close call with a missile launcher, though the incendiary had turned out to be a dud, before the General had helpfully blown the head off the wielder. Pre-War weapons were finicky in that way, and really, he had survived worse, though each near-miss grew a pulsing thought in the back of his head that he refused to dwell on whilst among the action.

A final ding from the elevator doors called them both to attention, though the reveal behind the sliding metal slabs revealed just another empty room. He vaguely acknowledged that the loudspeaker was emitting only static now, and he wondered if the speaker had slumped over on the call button, shoving the image away from his mind as soon as it came.

“More fucking stairs,” Nora muttered with a sigh. There was no more apprehension in their stance as they climbed, no more tension hidden behind a need for stealth. The walk was long and arduous, and both leaders were resigned with a certain sense of finality as the rounded a final corner.

Another closed door. But from within came a voice that made the pumping blood in Maxson’s heart run cold.

“Now, are you going to cooperate?”

Even the General stilled beside him. The voice was entirely devoid of emotion; no indication of the carnage it had left in the towering building above them. Incredibly level, perhaps soft, but with an underlying current of machine focus and the hardened edge of a knife. Maxson clenched his jaw at the sound, gloved hands tightening until white around the handle of his gatling.

Whatever had just spoken was not human.

He could feel it in his blood and bones, could taste it on his dry tongue. Only one squad od his had encountered a courser before, and it hadn’t ended well, but he had read enough and seen enough with his own eyes, grown and experienced, not formed, to feel the trepidation building back up in his spine. It disgusted him, that the heinous creature behind that door was not just an accident, an unforeseen but well-predicted consequence of the same tenants that wrought a nuclear war. The hidden monster had been created, with care and precision, and not just that, but revealed to the surface as a weapon.

Everyone involved in its creation deserved the death they had coming for them. Human, synth, and beyond.

“Maxson,” Nora whispered suddenly. He cast a sidelong glance at the General, who was standing completely still, eyes focused on the door. They flicked upwards once at him before resigning themselves back to the floor, and she shifted her feet once before speaking again. “I—I think you should take the lead on this one.”

That had been about the last thing he thought she would say, but he nodded his head all the same, stepping in front of her and placing one large hand on the door knob. Final Judgment strained against his fingers at the lost support, and he shifted back on one leg before looking back at the General.

She blew out a sigh and positioned her shotgun, and he opened the door.

The courser dropped the Gunner it had been threatening with ease, dusting its hands with faint annoyance against the leather of its coat, turning to face the leaders coolly. The Gunner crawled away desperately, cowering behind a set of stairs, and Maxson could barely take in the room before him before the courser spoke again.

“I don’t suppose you two have the password?”

Maxson lunged with the force of an agitated yao guai, but the courser stepped aside easily, flicking open a Stealth Boy set against its wrist and disappearing into an invisible shimmer.

“What the fuck,” the General hissed, her head snapping around the room. It vaguely occurred to the Elder that she may have never encountered a Stealth Boy before, before he felt something cold and smooth yank at the dangling gatling in his hands, before being kicked away by an unseen force, sliding across the room.

Maxson swiped blindly behind him, catching something resembling flesh with the brunt of his hardened knuckles, and followed the faint puff of air that released halfway across the room. The General blinked several times in a row before she focused on the shimmer, aiming her barrel towards it unsteadily, eyebrows pushed together.

Then the wind was knocked out of Maxson and the General was dangling half a foot off the ground, an invisible arm clamped around her neck. Her shotgun fell in two pieces, barrel snapped in half, to the ground.

“Fuck you,” she groaned, uselessly kicking her legs behind her as she grasped at the shimmering forearm wrapped around her.

The courser’s voice remained even, and Maxson raised his hands steadily as he looked at the hovering General, certain that there was a weapon crooked against her head, as the agent spoke, “You’ve been tracking me.”

Maxson wracked his brain as he took a hesitant step closer, causing the General’s neck to constrict tighter against the unseen grasp, trying to think of a positive end to the current situation. His gatling was at least four strides away; essentially useless, and he had a knife in his boot and a pistol stuffed inside his coat. Both were viable options, but with a concealed target, it was more a gauge of which would hurt the General less if he were to miss. And that was _assuming_ the crane of the General’s neck was because the courser’s only weapon was threatening her, and not already pointed at him.

“Brotherhood, is it?” The machine sneered, dragging its weight and the General’s back against a railing. Currently, Maxson’s only advantage, he realized, as he stacked the odds in his head. “My colleague sends his regards to...Recon Squad Alaris, was it?”

Nora’s lips were steadily turning purple as Maxson replied, “I intend to send my regards to you and your _kind_ myself.”

The General collapsed.

Maxson blinked. He could hear nothing but the pounding in his ears as the courser murmured in her ear, “I can still feel your pulse, you know.”

Before the General clamped her animal teeth down onto the invisible bar holding her back, bowing her head just enough for Maxson to snatch his pistol from his coat and fire one shot. Without much care to whether it landed, he rushed to the crumpled General, catching her by the torso before she fully hit the ground. Besides them, the Stealth Boy whirred, then the courser glitched back to visibility, completely still, with sticky blood pooling from a hole in its forehead.

“That was _one_ ?” Nora choked out, coughing harshly into her sleeve. Maxson lifted her chin up to examine her throat before she swatted him away, lifting herself into a sitting position and massaging her neck erratically. “ _Fuck_.”

“Are you alright?” Maxson asked.

She coughed again, pinching the bridge of her nose for a moment before replying. “I’m fine.”

Her voice strained against her bruised vocal chords, but she refused his helping hand, standing up by herself. Maxson let out a long breath, letting his lungs deflate completely before walking numbly towards his fallen weapon, snatching it from the floor. “Good trick.”

“Barely worked,” she grunted. She stared down at the courser’s body, hands tightened into white fists. “Good shot.”

Maxson rejoined her at the body, Final Judgment slung safely over his broad shoulders, and peered down. “How do we—”

Before he could finish his sentence, one tattered boot raised and stomped down on the courser’s head, destroying the final smirk on its lips. The General knelt down, unperturbed by the brain matter and gore, and plucked a rounded metallic chip from the gristle. With it, she unbuckled the Stealth Boy, examining it with a mixture disgust and curiosity.

“You can turn invisible in the future,” Nora observed mildly, dropping the device with a bark of laughter, stopping before another cough threatened to erupt. “Cryopods and teleportation and invisibility. My life is the worst science fiction ever made.”

From behind them, the surviving Gunner crawled back out from his hiding place. “Who the fuck are you guys?”

“Shut the fuck up,” the General snapped. The Gunner shriveled back, hands up in surrender. She pocketed the courser chip before turning back to the Elder. “My gun.”

He turned his gaze to her ruined shotgun, laying on the floor in two pieces, before pressing his lips together. Teagan probably couldn’t fix that. Hell, even Danse probably couldn’t fix it. He shook his head sympathetically, and she sighed, snatching the laser rifle from the courser’s gloved hands and shoving it into her holster.

“Is that all?” Maxson asked, looking around the quiet room, before his eyes caught sight of a girl, hovering behind a slatted window, eyes widened at the scene before her. Except it wasn’t a girl, despite the small, horrified cry it let out as it backed away.

“Don’t,” the General said immediately, striding over to the door with surprising agility. He didn’t miss the small rub of her neck as she brushed by him, examining the door handle.

“We’re done here,” Maxson retorted. He would be willing to compromise, this one time, he supposed: they could leave, and leave the synth in its locked compartment. “ _General_.”

“Locked with the terminal,” Nora muttered. She rapped on the door urgently, before Maxson grabbed her arm and dragged her away. In his peripherals, he could see the synth peer through the gaps in the blinds, though it backed away when it caught him looking again.

“Leave it,” he hissed. The General looked up at him, anger pooling into her dark eyes. “I just saved your life.”

“Appreciated, but that doesn’t mean you get to end another,” she snarled back, pushing herself up onto the balls of her feet. It brought her surprisingly eye level with him, but he still towered over her, leaning forward until their noses almost touched.

“Leave it,” he repeated. “Leave it, and I won’t kill it.”

“Leaving her there is just as good as killing her.”

It had been a long day, a thrilling one, even, and Maxson hadn’t even noticed his shoulders weren’t tensed until they began to, glaring down impassively at the ever-headstrong General. She was unswayed by his size, even as he leered at her, face only contorting into that mask of anger that usually occupied it.

“You’re a fucking piece of work,” he scorned, taking a step closer.

“Have a little empathy, Maxson, she’s just been kidnapped,” she snapped.

“Not a she,” Maxson corrected blithely. “An _it_.”

The General scoffed loudly, crossing her arms over her chest. “Oh, so the Prydwen is a _she_ , but this crying unarmed girl doesn’t deserve—”

“Guys,” the synth in question spoke up, looking concerned, but both leaders ignored her in favor of stepping closer to each other, breathing hot air into each other’s faces. "I appreciate it, but—"

“Having remote, uncontrollable connections to the most powerful faction in the Commonwealth is hardly _unarmed_ —”

“She’s just a fucking kid—”

“ _It_ has a creation date, the _appearance_ of age is a mere facsimile—”

Three rapid beeps from a frag mine were the last things Maxson remembered before being catapulted to the side, his whole world going black.


End file.
